By now, the 1983 movie, A Christmas Story, is nearly synonymous with the holiday season. Regardless of your religious or cultural persuasion, it's hard to pass on watching at least one airing of this modern tradition during the marathon "24 Hours of A Christmas Story" which is presented annually by Turner Broadcasting. In one of the most poignant scenes of the now holiday classic the central character, nine-year-old Ralphie, is temporarily disillusioned about all that he deems to be good when a message that he decyphers using his Little Orphan Annie decoder ring turns out to be nothing more than a “crummy commercial” for chocolatey breakfast beverage, Ovaltine. The horror of it! For Ralphie, the decoder ring had been his key to joining the inner circle of Little Orphan Annie fans, it was in his words, the chance to safeguard “the fate of world”.
At times, network security, seems to hold the same promise as Ralphie's decoder ring. Get it right and the safety and security of the organization's network can stave off would be attackers, ensure the integrity of intellectual property, maximize uptime and alert us to spikes in usage that can potentially bring operations to a halt. Get it wrong, however, and the fate of the world, or at least the organization is at stake. Unfortunately, for businesses, there is no Hollywood humor to these type of realities. CA Technologies, several years back, published a study of 200 companies and found that 1 in 3 declared a disaster in the last 5 years. IHS Markit, upped that estimate this year stating that “On average, survey respondents experience 5 downtime events per month, and 27 hours of downtime per month”. The leading causes of these disasters – operational failures, natural disaster and human related events. In other words, security. In a study conducted earlier this year by Emerson Network Power, the cost of that downtime was nearly $9,000 per minute. What's more, is that per minute cost is nearly double what is was when the study was first conducted in 2010.
Can the cloud hold your decoder ring?
As IT continues to play an increasingly important role in your organization’s success it is being called upon to provide higher security, greater scalability, and more cost control. At the same time, IT needs to help your business reach its goals. All of these requirements put additional pressure on IT to securely deliver performance, reliability, and availability.
More organizations are turning to the cloud to address their IT challenges and relying on a cloud provider’s data center to retain control while staying focused on core business needs. While each organizations' needs are unique, many organizations are taking a hybrid cloud approach, using both private and public cloud resources to seamlessly move workloads between the on-site data center and the public cloud. The cloud becomes an extension of the premises-based infrastructure and provides new ways to extend capabilities and increase agility. As a result, the organization gains improved security, greater network availability, and an assurance of compliance, contractual or otherwise.
Cloud security is no longer a security issue
According to RightScale, moving to the cloud is getting easier. Traditionally, the number one concern for moving to the cloud has been security. In fact, security has been the number one concern for businesses every year since 2013, until now. That concern has been dwarfed by lack of expert resources and the need for greater optimization. This greater comfort has pushed cloud adoption to 95% among business with most leveraging an average of 3 public and 3 private clouds.
If you're still on the fence about cloud security, now may be the time to consider it. Like Ralphie, the change could move your business to the inner circle of adopters. Remember though, not all offerings are created equal. Some services are limited in their flexibility and mobility and may not be able to address your future needs. Be sure to also evaluate performance commitments and SLAs.
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