October 14, 2010
One of the hottest topics in the security industry this year -- and therefore one of the most pervasive subjects at ASIS -- is cloud computing.
But, aside from being a preeminently emerging business platform and a ubiquitous part of modern culture, what is it?
Benjamin Butchko, CPP, president and CEO of Butchko Security Solutions, and Shayne Bates, CPP, vice president of Strategic Partnerships for Brivo Systems LLC, offered an enthusiastic primer on the topic Wednesday in their intermediate-level education session “Cloud Computing & Software as a Service: An Overview for Security Professionals,” a presentation based on a white paper they co-authored with the same title, which is available on the ASIS website at https://www.asisonline.org/councils/documents/CloudComputingFinal.pdf.
Early on in that 51-page study, the authors provide these three sentences by way of a definition: “As the security and reliability of the Internet and the services offered over it matures, there is a movement toward shared services. Some of the shared services are manifested in technology offerings that have such characteristics as fast implementation, reduced operational expense, and a multi-tenant model sharing common computing resources. The common terminology for this is Cloud Computing. . . .”
In the Oct. 13 presentation, Butchko, who also is chairman of the ASIS Physical Security Council, made the concept even simpler, saying, “If you’ve ever used Gmail or Google Analytics or TurboTax online, you’ve used cloud technology.” Such are popular and mainstream examples of ways cloud technology is being deployed.
“It’s an on-demand service,” added Bates, who also is chairman of the Cloud Computing Workgroup and author of the “Cloud 9” blog. “You can subscribe and enjoy the service with a few clicks. . . . If you’ve got Internet access and a Web browser, you’ve generally got enablement. The application is online; all you do is log on and use it. You’re not investing in infrastructure; you’re leveraging what you already have.”
Butchko added: “The ‘cloud’ in this context is where the information resides, where it’s processed. It’s not sitting on your computer. You’re effectively renting the ability to use an application. From the user’s perspective, you’re just seeing the application. Security is taken care of for you.”
Broadening the scope, Bates and Butchko noted that for many security professionals, the technology enables their companies to outsource applications such as video surveillance, video management, access, and control without the burden of buying and maintaining software and equipment -- and without giving up either control or access. Infinitely scalable and flexible, the technology allows for “rapid elasticity” (business expansion or contraction), depending on whether companies need to add to or decrease the size of their network, as is often the case in merger/acquisition situations, in a cost-effective way in terms of critical infrastructure.
Bates called this the “ET Phone Home” philosophy: “It enables you to have centralized resources without having to deploy resources all over the planet.”
The presenters said that one of the major issues at play with cloud computing is the reality that all participants’ data becomes intermingled with every other person’s data being hosted in that outsourced application.
When a company opts to deal itself with the maintenance and storage issues of, for example, video storage, that information is primarily located in its own system, and there is a natural boundary that provides privacy protection.
Within the cloud, in some scenarios, privacy issues may need to be resolved. On the other hand, as part of the emergence of the technology, new security capabilities designed for the protection of critical information already have been created, and more will evolve as the technology continues to dominate -- so much so that it is not difficult to envision a near future in which businesses outsource their IT function altogether. The centralized place where that information is outsourced to is “the cloud.”
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