Class Project- Cloud Computing
Cloud Computing – Cloud Security and Microsoft Azure
The future of technology and life as we know it is changing progressively. From the start of the Internet, there have been many advancements especially since the foundation of the Internet. The cloud has become the new norm for most companies and institutions, being connected virtually has helped progress the future of technology. Cloud computing is being more common for corporations to use as it increases the overall efficiency of businesses. Cloud computing is systematic for the on-demand availability that people can use for IT resources. Companies like Amazon, Microsoft, and IBM have started providing these pay-as-you-go services to companies and industries which have changed the way people deal with technology. However, many risks surround cloud services, which is where cloud security comes into play. As more companies and industries lean towards cloud services, cloud security has become an important factor as well. Cloud security is the securement of cloud computing systems, which is essential for cloud services. Cloud security protects many things including the physical networks, the data, the operating systems, the applications, and many more. In MIS 3406, we had to deal with cloud security in your virtual private cloud. Creating a private and public subnet also ensured that the access was only to people that had access to the virtual private cloud. Security groups were another way cloud security was used in class to make sure that the virtual private cloud and its instances were secure. Security groups are virtual firewall that is provided by Amazon Web Services for your amazon elastic compute cloud or EC2 instances. These security groups control inbound and outbound traffic, which is an important factor when it comes to cloud security and dealing with cyber attacks. Overall amazon web services have many components that deal with cloud security. AWS has a four-part system to deal with security problems which are to prevent, detect, respond and remediate. Another topic that was not mentioned to an extent in class but I found interesting, is Microsoft Azure and the difference it has to Amazon Web Services. Azure is a cloud service offered and operated by Microsoft for application management. It launched to the public on February 1, 2010, with the name formerly being Windows Azure. The name was changed on April 3, 2014, in an act to show how focused the company was towards the public cloud platform. Azure being similar to Amazon Web Services is an open-source cloud platform that helps companies in the development, service hosting, service management, and data storage. Azure offers express routes while AWS offers direct connection. Providing security by offering permissions on the whole account, whereas, AWS security is provided using defined roles with permission control features. Microsoft Azure machines are grouped into cloud services and respond to the same domain name with various ports whereas the AWS machine can be accessed separately. The cloud service Azure is a virtual network cloud whereas AWS has Virtual Private Cloud. Azure also has higher availability zones of 140 whereas AWS has 61 availability zones. Both these topics relate to each other as Azure also uses cloud security to ensure protection for its service. Microsoft Azure although not as common as Amazon Web Services has more than 200,000+ companies that use it such as Verizon, LG Electronics, MSI, and many more. Cloud Security is essentially important for all cloud services as there is extremely sensitive information that companies put into the services and breaches would cause complications and drawbacks. As even a glitch in the system affected millions of users and companies on the 7th of December. Ensuring that having your Cloud Security is above par is essential.