I am at TechSec this week in sunny Delray Beach, Florida (actually, it’s pouring rain). The sessions here have been diverse, with a range of topics and great content.
I was invited to speak on a panel as part of, “Is your cloud provider secure?” Joining me was Chris Peckham (SVP & CTO Kratos), Morgan Hertal (VP & GM MACE CS) and Yong-Gon Chon (VP & CTO SecureInfo Corp)… all experts in the cloud services field.
My role was to address the group from the aspect of a vendor supplying a cloud service. What questions should you ask? How do you know the data is secure? Why would I use the cloud, etc.? There are a lot of myths and misconceptions about the cloud. What was eye-catching was the interest of running services in the cloud (services also being described as a product). PPM has been providing Perspective as a secure cloud base option for years. Although we were not able to use company and product names during the session, I was able to describe the benefits of using Perspective in the cloud… everything from improved customer satisfaction simply because updates are done quickly and easily, to the removal of IT barriers, to payment options which are more easily accessible than high output capital costs, to the security of the data. These points were substantiated by the rest of the panel in how they approach the cloud.
So why are we so afraid of the cloud? Obviously, a lot still revolves around data security. The answer: Your cloud service provider should be able to protect your data as well, if not better, than your own IT group. There are simple questions to ask:
- Is there a disaster recovery plan? What’s the backup plan?
- Has a vulnerability assessment been completed?
- Are there audits completed?
- Is data encrypted over the wire?
- Who has access to the data? Is there a separation of duties document?
The same questions you would ask your IT group, you should ask your cloud service provider. Here at PPM, anyone looking to move or start on our SaaS offering has full access to the documents referenced above. Many companies also send officials to review the physical site. As I told the group at this morning’s panel, the cloud is here and staying. Don’t be afraid of it. The security structure of an enterprise class cloud is much stronger than a consumer-based service cloud (e.g., Facebook, Twitter, etc.). Recently, Microsoft Canada released a poll where 60% of the respondents said they would never use a cloud service for their business apps. Interestingly, 20% of those were already using cloud-based services and didn’t even know it.
We also discussed integration (and the other word… convergence). How do you connect a cloud service to other systems? The answer, again simple: You can connect cloud data to onsite systems and other cloud services. We mentioned the cloud-to-cloud service offering between PPM and Brivo ACS, and I also mentioned an integration where we are pulling data from a Honeywell system running onsite, moving 70,000 plus records to a Perspective cloud offering.
At the end, it seemed clear. People recognize that there are numerous benefits to the cloud. Moving to it may seem scary, but ask the right questions, and you may find that your data is better protected from a cloud provider, IT hassles are removed, and user experience can improve.
Have you considered moving apps to the cloud? Is Perspective in the cloud? Absolutely!
—Brian McIlravey, CPP, Co-CEO
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