Private Cloud versus Public Cloud

If you’re thinking about moving to the cloud, the choice of private versus public will inevitably come up. However, your choice is going to depend on a number of factors including the infrastructure, security, compliance, cost and scalability.

According to Computerworld UK – ‘The Voice of Management’, whose aim is to assist IT professionals with varied IT related content, the UK Parliament has determined that Public cloud benefits outweigh security and data sovereignty risks. They evaluated the workings of the Patriot Act as well as the NSA Prism scheme to learn more about potential breaches. Joan Miller, Director of Parliamentary ICT stated, “Risk should be balanced out with opportunity – don’t think everything is going to fail.” She believes that the use of public cloud can help boost security and ensure the delivery of services.

Having the benefit of scalability per users’ requirements, no hardware needs and the ability to access content outside of the network with a built in disaster recovery plan is a huge advantage over a private cloud. The bottom line is whether or not your company wants a “comfy” feeling.

Today’s cloud offerings include encryption tools to keep content secure, but hackers are most likely always going to be able to get around them. Homophoric encryption, where any software could perform any calculation on encrypted data and produce a result that is also encrypted, would ensure that data could only escape in an encrypted form and would be nearly impossible to decode. Until the day comes when we get homophoric encryption, we will always have uncertainty.

In the meantime, measuring your risk of public scrutiny should be at the forefront of your considerations. Which do you prefer; public view of objectionable practices after an incident/publicized finding or publicized information on how you are managing your compliance processes?