Approach to Cloud Security Needs to be More Targeted

There is a drop in the concern related to cloud security after cloud computing has become popular among businesses of almost all kinds. As this is a major service and therefore the security of the service needs to be considered. However, the security is a reason that most companies feel hesitated to deploy the cloud solutions. Nevertheless, the security concerns are not faded away entirely and to enjoy the benefits of the services, the business leaders need to remain aware of the issue of cloud security and ways to minimize threat.

The major danger is the popularity of consumer grade cloud services. Although the offerings are lucrative, but the issue is, these offerings have no advanced features and reliable security. In case the employees deploy the tools at a time, the data security may come at risk.

Besides this, the human error is another issue in cloud security that may put the risk of consumer grade Cloud solutions.

People and business associates are aware of the issues, but despite the risks, it is important that you recognize the security threats can be neutralized with strategies and resources. The workers can get training sessions to overcome the issues and make usage of passwords in a right manner.

Many personnel do not know cloud security best practices, nor do they realize how important these steps are for the company's overall success. 

When it comes to consumer-grade cloud solutions, the companies can reduce the chances of risk by simply investing in enterprise grade services that also fulfill the purpose. Companies typically only turn to consumer-grade cloud solutions when they lack officially sanctioned options. If a business turns to an established cloud services provider to address these needs, the appeal of consumer-grade cloud options all but evaporates.

As business leaders are becoming more aware about the cloud security, it is becoming a top-level concern. And if a company wants to take an advantage of cloud services, it is impossible unless organization feels confident regarding the security of the data. So, the cloud security is a major concern in today’s business environment and companies can secure the data by adopting it. 

Serverless Computing - A New Addition to Google's Cloud Platform

Google recently alpha-tested its new feature named "Google Cloud Functions", thus adding Serverless computing to its existing Cloud platform. By deploying this feature, developers can upload JavaScript code snippets which get triggered as a response to some events. Currently, this new feature being in Alpha stage is made available for deployment by selected Google customers only. App Engine, Container Engine and Compute Engine, are some computing services complemented well by Google's Cloud Functions. 

 

The simplicity and “NoOps” based model of Serverless computing has fetched it enormous industry attention in the recent past. Following the fire & forget paradigm, the current genre of developers upload individual code snippets hooked to multiple events at runtime. However, Serverless computing helps implement a low-risk, no-friction mechanism that's absolutely free of any sort of administrative overheads. So, it would not be wrong to say that a new wave of web-scale computing has risen with the Serverless computing model. 

Google Cloud Functions as a Medium for Serverless Computing...

As per Google official documentation, Google Cloud Functions being an event-based, asynchronous Cloud computing platform, or precisely solution, helps developers to build single-purpose functions. A physical server or runtime environment is not required at all for these functions to respond to Cloud events. Provisioning or configuring virtual machines thus becomes pretty much avoidable in such scenario. Events raised by Google Cloud Storage and Google Cloud Pub/Sub invoke the uploaded snippets. It’s also possible to invoke the same synchronously via HTTP calls.

Few Interesting Scenarios Discussed for Google Cloud Functions...

Uploading a new document to Google Cloud Storage Bucket immediately causes a function to get invoked; thus converting the document into a PDF that is further uploaded to some different location. Also, there is no requirement of VMs running image software for converting the high-resolution images that are uploaded to cloud storage into suitable thumbnails. It’s also possible to validate scanned documents/forms and sending the relevant response to relevant parties. Google Cloud Pub/Sub offers opportunities of reliable messaging between different applications; specifically allowing applications to communicate with each other.

Is Google on the Same Path as Amazon??

Prior to Google, Amazon already launched its Serverless computing service under the name AWS Lambda in the year 2014. Over the past two years, Lambda has gained enormous popularity as one of the Amazon's Web Service. Precisely, Lambda is serving the purpose of Amazon’s micro services strategy and Amazon is on its way to strengthening it further by adding support for Python & Java quickly. So, it seems like Google will also be following the same strategy in the coming time by customizing its recently-tested Serverless computing feature in the coming time.

An Overview of Google's Recently Alpha-tested Cloud Functions Feature

Google is working on testing a Cloud Functions feature that automatically triggers other events as soon as there is a change in Cloud service. If this feature goes successfully, developers will find it easier to create richer services. Google's Cloud Functions is lightweight, synchronous, event-based feature that enables developers build single-purpose functions responding to Cloud events. Most importantly, there would be no need to deploy efforts for managing a server or runtime environment while using this feature, something that will definitely save time & resources.  

Understanding Cloud Events & Functions from Developer's Perspective...

A developer's Cloud environment witnesses a range of activities, which are normally referred as Cloud events. A Cloud event may be anything ranging from modifying data in a database, addition of new files to a storage system, or simply creation of a new virtual machine instance. Triggers serve as the starting point for creating a specific response to a specific event. By definition, the basic mechanisms for responding to a specific event are referred as Cloud Functions.

Written in JavaScript, Cloud Functions are executed in a fully managed Node.js environment that's available on Google Cloud Platform. Cloud Functions can be triggered asynchronously from Google Cloud Pub/Sub and Google Cloud Storage. Such events can even use HTTP invocation for the purpose of synchronous execution.

By alpha testing this promising Cloud events feature, Google seems to give developers something equally beneficial as Amazon's Lambda is providing. Lambda is made available by Amazon to automate such tasks for developers and allow them quickly create richer services. Now, with this feature, it’s fairly evident that Google has also implemented its plan on the same lines.

What Google Says on its New Cloud Function Feature?

The current release being an Alpha release of Google Cloud Functions, Google recommends not deploying it for production purpose. Google also makes it very clear that backward-incompatible ways may be adopted for making any changes, if required, to this new feature. Also, accessing the feature would require Google's permission and so developers will have to request for the same from Google.

How Quickly your Organization is Migrating to Hybrid Cloud?

The prominence of Cloud technology has been established among companies of all sizes and among different verticals. Organizations across the globe are fast migrating towards Cloud and it’s something that has helped them gain quite phenomenally in terms of efficiency, productivity and overall cost reduction. 

Hybrid Cloud is Indeed the Future of Cloud Computing…

Incorporating Cloud technologies, especially the Hybrid Cloud, has become the priority of most organizations. In such migrations however, there are a lot of considerations to be taken. Hybrid Cloud has fast become a subject of priority for enterprises as survey reveals 29 percent respondents leveraging Hybrid Cloud while those preferring Public Cloud & Private Cloud was found to be 27 & 23 percent respectively. 10 percent even assign equal importance to Public and Private Cloud.  

 

Though most of the worries of organizations embracing Hybrid Cloud have reduced to a bare minimum, reducing Cloud costs still remains a posing challenge. In 2015, while 24 percent IT managers across the globe considered it a huge challenge ahead, the percentage has gone up by 2 percent this year too. However, companies have already started planning to implement ways of shrinking Cloud-related costs.

Overcoming Challenges in Hybrid Cloud Adoption is Crucial too…

A large number of vendors have pushed organizations to embrace Cloud as this allows these firms to deploy a specific vendor application. Both private & public clouds have been embraced by organizations as the cost-effective substitute to on-premises IT. Enterprises have also realized the need to adopt the Hybrid Cloud approach as it would allow them leverage data & applications irrespective of being in datacenter or public/private Cloud.

However, hybrid cloud environment also demands fail-proof security and governance besides the ability of smooth working of Cloud & data center apps together while exchanging data quickly. Organizations across the globe are adopting different strategies to make this vision come true. However, there are a number of barriers encountered while doing so. Hence, the need of time is also formulate strategies for overcoming such barriers.