Professional Documents
Culture Documents
www.ukfast.co.uk
Can you trust the cloud?............................................................................................................................................................ 2 Understanding the risks of the cloud.................................................................................................................................... 3 Is it all just bad press?........................................................................................................................................................... 4 Understanding the vulnerabilities............................................................................................................................................... 4 Compliance and legislation................................................................................................................................................... 5 How to protect your data in the cloud........................................................................................................................................ 5 Choose the right cloud................................................................................................................................................................. 6 Public cloud........................................................................................................................................................................... 6 Private cloud.......................................................................................................................................................................... 7 Hybrid cloud.......................................................................................................................................................................... 7
8 MyCloudStack...............................................................................................................................................................................
Cloud buyers checklist................................................................................................................................................................. 10 Appendices Appendix 1 Sony PlayStation Network data breach............................................................................................................ 11 Appendix 2 - Amazon EC2 Service downtime........................................................................................................................ 11
WINNER
Best Business Customer Service
WINNER
Corporate Social Responsibility
The cloud has revolutionised many business processes, vastly improving communications, collaboration, and efficiency. It is trusted to house sensitive data such as personnel details, customer details and supplier information.
managing IT infrastructures, increasing performance and security levels, as well as reducing costs when setup correctly. Key benefits
The cloud offers variable cost structures, state-of-the-art infrastructure and the latest software, without the risk of heavy investment and eliminating under-utilised infrastructure. The advantages have attracted many businesses to move to the cloud to support their cost-reducing strategy. Forecasts have shown that many more will follow; Forrester has predicted that the cloud computing market is expected to grow from $40.7 billion to $240 billion by 20201. With many major companies including Apple developing cloud services, it is inevitable that cloud computing will become a fundamental part of our IT infrastructure. This must-have service model offers all of the benefits that are top of the agenda for IT decision makers; however, not all clouds are equal. Some clouds unfortunately do not cover their biggest concern; the safekeeping of their business data and very few providers offer water-tight guarantees and service level agreements. This means that if you make the wrong choice, your data can be at risk and the standards of support available will fall way below the expectations of most businesses. The considerable advantages of cloud computing make this technology extremely desirable. So, how do you choose the right infrastructure? IT decision makers must choose a provider that delivers the correct controls, protection and transparency needed to help protect data and avoid data loss, leakage, downtime and risk of online threats.
Enhanced security and data protection Infinite scalability Reduced capital expenditure and maintenance overheads Increased performance Greater business flexibility
WINNER
Best Business Customer Service
WINNER
Corporate Social Responsibility
It is unsurprising that their main concern is data security. With many online threats and frightening news stories, the cloud becomes a daunting place to store your business data if you dont fully understand it. In reality, a cloud solution can offer the same levels of high security afforded to more traditional dedicated server solutions, providing you know what to specify. The Information Systems Audit and Control Association (ISACA) has stated that the number of security threats on the internet appears to be increasing; its investigation has shown that online threats and attacks are becoming more commonplace and increasing in complexity and sophistication.
DDoS protection Annual security audits
Understanding the risks, vulnerabilities and the very latest layers of defence available is crucial when choosing a cloud hosting provider. It is imperative that your solution incorporates advanced data security and redundancy provisions. Whatever solution you have, security must be top priority.
WINNER
Best Business Customer Service
WINNER
Corporate Social Responsibility
In truth, cloud services arent necessarily more risky or less secure than maintaining applications and data in the corporate data centre. In fact, some experts still believe that the cloud provides greater security to enterprises, but this depends on their technical makeup. But, is the cloud more secure than your in-house IT infrastructure? The answer can most certainly be yes, if the cloud is built properly. IT outsourcing allows you to take advantage of enterprise class IT without the need for costly upgrades, server management or maintenance. And with leading cloud providers offering expert technical services, business class security technologies, 24 hour monitoring and support outsourcing to a reputable provider can release you from the day-to-day IT issues that so often impede business progress.
at Gecko.
Instead of having to outlay for the provision of new equipment and new servers when they know the campaign is only running for three months, they can scale up, pay for that particular amount of time, then scale back to their normal amounts. Jonathan Whiteside, founder of Building Blocks.
WINNER
Best Business Customer Service
WINNER
Corporate Social Responsibility
WINNER
Best Business Customer Service
WINNER
Corporate Social Responsibility
Built-in business continuity 24/7/365 expert IT support 100% system compliance Rapid scalability and deployment 100% carbon neutral
>> Use the checklist on page 10 to ensure your cloud solution is properly secured.
WINNER
Best Business Customer Service
WINNER
Corporate Social Responsibility
Hybrid cloud The hybrid cloud delivers a combination of dedicated hosting and private or public cloud hosting. Providing you with greater flexibility and additional capacity when required, hybrid clouds are well suited for businesses with seasonal peaks or marketing driven spikes in traffic. Offering a cost effective solution, a hybrid cloud ensures that your services can meet these periodic traffic demands whilst maintaining control, visibility and data protection. In short, a hybrid cloud combines the ultimate security of a dedicated hosting solution with the elasticity of cloud computing.
in staff motivation and provides its staff with technical and administrative training programmes.
WINNER
Best Business Customer Service
WINNER
Corporate Social Responsibility
New and exclusive to UKFast, MyCloudStack is the latest evolution in cloud technology - a private cloud-ina-box. Developed in collaboration with Microsoft and available on Hyper-V and VMware, MyCloudStack offers the highest standards of protection available in a cloud environment. MyCloudStack is a private cloud hosting solution that provides you with the controls, privacy, protection and availability that your business needs. MyCloudStack is designed to offer you a flexible package built to your exact requirements. MyCloudStack encompasses: Defence layer Performance layer Virtualisation layer Storage layer Backup layer Monitoring layer MyCloudStack allows you to take advantage of the strengths of cloud computing with added data security, performance and redundancy. Managed defence layers monitor your private cloud for any hacking attempts and alert you to any signs of cyber-crime that could affect your business. Offering you the best protection for your business, MyCloudStack incorporates premium security features to reduce any chances of your business falling victim to an online attack. This can include: Redundant pair of dedicated managed Cisco ASA firewall with Security Plus license Intrusion detection system McAfee Active Virus Defence Annual security audits DDoS protection
>> Use the checklist on page 10 to ensure your cloud solution is properly secured.
WINNER
Best Business Customer Service
WINNER
Corporate Social Responsibility
Page 9
Call our solution experts on 0800 954 0899 to discuss the possibilities now. Or to learn more about our solution visit www.ukfast.co.uk/mycloudstack.html
Intelligent backup secure, effortless full state system backups Proactive uptime monitoring continuous monitoring with engineer & client alerts Award winning ISPA Best Hosting Provider 4 consecutive years, ISPA Best Business Customer Service, ISPA Best CSR High grade bandwidth, optimised for web acceleration 100% network uptime guarantee
Technology partners
WINNER
Best Business Customer Service
WINNER
Corporate Social Responsibility
Page 10
Hardware Protection:
Software Protection:
Network Security:
Performance:
Support:
WINNER
Best Business Customer Service
WINNER
Corporate Social Responsibility
Appendix 2 Amazon EC2 Service downtime Amazon also cast a bad shadow on the cloud with a significant system outage of their public cloud due to an infrastructure issue. Amazons datacentres suffered major downtime that caused extensive disruptions to websites around the globe. Their client base incurred huge losses due to the interruption of their services which for some lasted hours whilst other websites were offline for days. This downtime also affected dozens of high profile companies including Quora, FourSquare and Reddit. Their infrastructure fault came about due to a traffic shift that was executed incorrectly. Traffic was routed onto a lower capacity network which couldnt handle the level of load that it was receiving causing it to fail. The crash has not only taken the websites offline, but has also destroyed a large amount of client data. This outage has reinforced concerns that the cloud cannot offer adequate security and stability. Having correct hardware protection could have avoided this disaster. Capacity Threshold Monitoring and Proactive Uptime monitoring facilities would have alerted Amazon to the traffic issue in time for them to shift the load or increase their capacity before it had an impact on their services.
WINNER
Best Business Customer Service
WINNER
Corporate Social Responsibility
WINNER
Best Business Customer Service
WINNER
Corporate Social Responsibility
WINNER
Best Business Customer Service
WINNER
Corporate Social Responsibility
UKFast City Tower Piccadilly Plaza Manchester M1 4BT t. 0800 458 4545 f. 0870 458 4545 w. www.ukfast.co.uk e. headoffice@ukfast.co.uk