A hybrid cloud model combines a private cloud with one or more public cloud solutions. In a hybrid cloud model, proprietary software enables communication between distinct services. This type of cloud computing model can help gain security advantage provided some critical challenges are addressed.

Following are crucial cybersecurity risks that need to be identified and addressed before implementing the hybrid cloud model:

• Compliance: A hybrid cloud model involves data movement between high-security private cloud and comparatively less secure public cloud. Such data movement may induce compliance issues and make data vulnerable to breaches. Businesses need to take extra measures to ensure that the hybrid cloud model meets compliance requirements. It may be achieved by ensuring that individual private and public cloud networks meet standard data security norms such as GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation). Also, it is important to make sure that the data transfer mechanisms adhere to regulatory requirements.

• Data Privacy: The essence of hybrid cloud model lies in flexible data movement between public cloud and private cloud. In such movement, there are high chances that the data can fall prey to intruder attacks that challenge the organization’s data privacy rules. Organizations should employ measures such as endpoint verification protocol, robust VPN, and strong encryption policy. These measures help in encrypting and protecting data from security breach incidents.
  
• Distributed Denial of Service: DDoS is another serious cyber-attack that can be initiated from multiple sources to target a single location. Since the attack has various source locations, it becomes difficult to trace and detect. This increases the risk factor. To tackle this, organizations need to maintain a strict monitoring system that can track the inflow and outflow of data. It is important to make sure that the monitoring system should be scalable, responsive, and able to handle multi-vector attacks.
  
• Service Level Agreements (SLA): Employing a hybrid cloud solution means handing over data governance and accountability to its public Cloud Service Provider (CSP). If the security of such a public cloud is compromised, it can be a severe issue and may lead to critical data loss. To avoid such issues, be careful while signing Service Level Agreements with the service provider to ensure data confidentiality. Make it a point to understand security limitations and strictly define accountability factors.
  
• Risk Management: Organizations should employ adequate risk management and preventive safety measures to protect their intellectual property from potential risks. Organizations can use tools such as IDS/IPS to scan malicious traffic. Also, maintain a log monitoring system with advanced firewall and security management features.
  
• Data Redundancy: Organizations should adopt a well-defined data redundancy policy to ensure timely backup of critical data. This can be achieved by maintaining multiple data centers. It also helps in continuing business services during data center outages.

For more information on various cloud models, contact Centex Technologies at (972) 375 – 9654

Cloud computing offers an array of benefits to organizations and thus, it has become a popular choice for data storage and computing. Depending upon individual business requirements, organizations can choose between private cloud and public cloud solutions.

Private Cloud: It is a model of cloud computing where IT services are provisioned on-premises over private IT infrastructure for dedicated use by single organization. It is managed by internal resources of the organization.

Public Cloud: In public cloud model, computing services are offered by a third party over public internet to multiple client organizations as per their capacity or usage requirement. It is managed by the service provider and organizations have to pay according to the storage or bandwidth consumed by them.

However, a new term ‘Hybrid Cloud’ has emerged in recent years. A hybrid cloud combines the services of a private and public cloud to allow seamless sharing of data between them. The organizations can run their workloads partially on private cloud and rest in public cloud. This prevents public or third party service providers from gaining access to entire data of the business.

Working Of Hybrid Clouds

• Private and public clouds work independently in a hybrid cloud setup.
• The resources are abstracted and pooled into private and public clouds by virtualization.
• These abstracted resources are then allocated by automation.
• Management tools provision new environments.
• A hybrid cloud functions properly when APIs, VPNs or WANs connect the private & public clouds as seamlessly as possible.
• The interconnectivity between public and private clouds is the underlying concept for a functional hybrid cloud.

Benefits Of Hybrid Cloud Infrastructure

• It is a cost effective approach. Organizations can use private cloud for managing regular workloads and pay for extra usage on public cloud only when there is a need for scalability arising due to an occasional increase in workload.
• The approach helps in separating sensitive or critical workloads from regular data. Organizations employing hybrid cloud approach have the benefit of storing critical financial data, customer information, etc. on their private cloud while utilizing public cloud to run general applications.
• Public cloud resources can be used for allocation to short-term projects, instead of spending money on buying on-premises hardware and infrastructure for temporary use.
• The availability of private cloud resources facilitates testing of applications as it grants back-end access to the developers.
• Hybrid cloud infrastructure integrates the public cloud computing and private cloud which allows the organization to have control over security and regulations.
• It offers excessive flexibility. A hybrid cloud setup can be scaled up to the use of public cloud or scaled down to private cloud as per the demand.

For more information about hybrid cloud, call Centex Technologies at (972) 375 – 9654.