Cloud Architecture & Cloud Security
We hear of the “cloud” almost everywhere nowadays. “My pictures are in the cloud!” “Our texts are sent through the cloud!” What exactly is the cloud? Cloud architecture is simply the interaction of cloud technology components. The cloud itself refers to servers that are accessible through the internet. This is where data, such as pictures or texts, is stored or transmitted. According to Schuff’s cloud architecture course (MIS 3406), the cloud can also be defined as shared computing resources (processing, storage, network) that run elsewhere (accessible through a network and/or the internet).
Types of cloud services include infrastructure as a service (IaaS), platform as a service (PaaS), and software as a service (SaaS). Two of the most popular IaaS are Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft Azure. In Schuff’s course, we got to work with AWS, which is one of the most popularly adopted cloud services. In this course, we explored many internal components of AWS such as VPC (isolated cloud resources), RDS (managed relational database service), EC2 (virtual servers), S3 (scalable storage), CloudFront (global content delivery network), Lambda (serverless coding), DynamoDB (managed NoSQL database), and IAM (resource access management). As one can infer, AWS has an expansive array of resources that support the cloud and cloud-related computing.
Now, one may ask, how does AWS differ from other cloud service providers such as Azure? And why did MIS 3406 focus on AWS instead of Azure? In order to answer these questions, we must also define the functionality of Azure. Microsoft Azure is a cloud computing platform that provides access and management of applications and services through Microsoft’s globally-distributed data centers. The major differences between AWS and Azure lay in name establishment, availability zones, market share, ease of use, pricing, services and features, reliability, and security. For starters, AWS launched in 2006 whereas Azure launched in 2010. Those four years gave Amazon an upperhand in the cloud computing industry. Since AWS was the earliest in the game, it had more time to expand its availability zones. AWS currently boasts 31 geographic regions and 99 availability zones. AWS even announced plans to expand its availability within the coming years, with 12 additional availability zones and 4 additional regions. AWS’s time advantage also plays into its greater market share of the cloud industry. It holds about 33% whereas Azure holds 22%. AWS also features the AWS management console, which is a user-friendly interface. This is ideal for students, considering that the majority of them have yet to touch cloud infrastructures. Additionally, AWS has the best pricing in the market due to their significant market share. This is one of the key reasons why MIS 3406 focuses on AWS instead of Azure. Cost is one of the factors that college students worry about most. Going back to its time advantage, AWS’s extra years in the industry allowed it to evolve its offerings and services. Agilisium describes them as the most functionality-rich in the cloud industry. Currently, AWS provides 200+ services which is twice the amount of Azure’s 100+ services. AWS is also considered to be one of the most reliable services due to its constant maintenance. They haven’t had an outage incident since February 2017. Lastly, AWS has excellent security services and resources due to its dynamic business goal to be proactive. Since it is the most dominant and mature service provider, it has the greatest array of security configurations such as network access restrictions. While it is difficult to say whether one IaaS is better than the other, it becomes clear that AWS is a great fit for MIS students taking the first step towards learning cloud architecture.
In relation to the security aspect of AWS, cloud security is a major component of all things cloud computing. Cloud security is essentially a collection of policies, procedures, technologies, and applications designed to protect business and infrastructures from external and internal threats. This is important because the dynamic, digital transformation of the business industry unfortunately comes with greater cyber-risk. With the rise of cyberattacks, cloud security becomes more imperative in all business models and cloud-based infrastructures. Security is also an integral part of AWS’s architectural best practices for designing and operating systems in the cloud. These best practices are also known as the well-architected framework. The presence of threats and risks may cause an organization to face serious repercussions and privacy loss. Many of the leading cloud service providers such as AWS, Azure, Google Cloud, Salesforce, and IBM have already taken active measures to enforce enhanced security. AWS, for example, affords many functionalities such as triggers, IAM, security groups, etc. An example of how cloud security in AWS has been applied in practice protrudes from the usage of IAM in MIS 3406. IAM (identity and access management) was applied to in-class assignments and projects in order to control access and manage permissions for cloud systems. An additional security feature used in assignments and projects was the creation of private subnets that did not allow for external access from the internet. This ensured that only specified information was accessible to the public. We also consistently applied security groups to VPCs in order to limit access and increase privacy. A real world example that can be applied to everyday life is the usage of cloud storage and backup for important emails, files, passwords, and accounts through services such as Dropbox or Apple’s iCloud. It may not be at the forefront of everyone’s mind as they take pictures or send text messages, but the cloud truly permeates all aspects of our life. Whether that is through simple everyday tasks or through the large business scale of cloud computing and cloud security.
Bibliography
Agilisium. (n.d.). 11 Reasons Why AWS Is The Right Choice Of Data & Analytics Platform
For Your Business. Agilisium: Big on Cloud, Big on Data. Retrieved April 26, 2023, from
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https://aws.amazon.com/what-is-aws/
Cloudflare. (n.d.). What is the Cloud? Cloudflare. Retrieved April 27, 2023, from
https://www.cloudflare.com/learning/cloud/what-is-the-cloud/
Google. (n.d.). What is Cloud Architecture? Google Cloud. Retrieved April 26, 2023, from
IBM. (n.d.). What is Cloud Security? IBM. Retrieved April 26, 2023, from
https://www.ibm.com/topics/cloud-security
Microsoft. (n.d.). What is Azure? Microsoft Azure. Retrieved April 26, 2023, from
https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/resources/cloud-computing-dictionary/what-is-azure/