Cloud Communications

CloudPassage Discusses Notion of Cloud Security

By Juliana Kenny TMCnet Managing Editor

When discussing the evolution of cloud computing, and “the cloud” in general, one of the most pressing issues is security. How can an organization be assured of its data’s properly stored? What if there is a backup problem? Many decision makers feel that they do not have enough knowledge about how secure the cloud is; resulting in them not making the move to hosted solutions. But one vendor in attendance at ITEXPO (News - Alert) East 2012 in Miami is in this very business.

As an infrastructure-as-a-service security company, CloudPassage helps businesses maintain their competitive edges by leveraging the economies of the cloud in secure fashions. In an interview with Chris Brenton, Cloud Security architect with CloudPassage, Erik Linask, TMC’s (News - Alert) editorial director, probed him as to how CloudPassage has made a name for itself in the world of cloud security.

“Where it’s different from most of the security products out there is that it’s fully portable with the introduction to cloud, especially hybrid, especially with mobile coming in now, we’re seeing more instances of where folks may have a server on their private networks, and on occasion they need to burst that out to one or more providers.”

The way CloudPassage ensures security is by securing the virtual machine, itself, according to Brenton. So CloudPassage’s security solution actually moves with the machine, adjusting to whatever security measures have been put in place.

Brenton is confident that decision makers are changing their views when it comes to doubting the security of the cloud and it negatively impacting their movement towards cloud-based solutions. “It’s a different mindset,” said Brenton. “Cloud is more disruptive to our infrastructure literally since we’ve moved from mainframe to PCs. It requires a complete rethink on how to do things.”

He mentioned that, in his personal opinion, establishing security in the cloud doesn’t seem to be all that much more difficult or easy than establishing it on a legacy-based system. Check out his interview here for all the details and other interviews from the show.

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