Of the variations of the cloud, the private option is enticing to many enterprise IT leaders. They are embracing its capabilities to improve their company’s agility, reduce costs, and accelerate development cycles—all while doing so internally. With a private cloud, IT can still get the benefits of a public one, while asserting more control over protection, compliance, and security.
Why Choose a Private Cloud?
With a private cloud, your IT department will be able to deliver a lot more. End-users can spin up computing resources on demand for virtually any kind of workload, and the business can scale for growth and demand as computing needs increase or demand decreases. In a private cloud environment, IT teams can simplify deployments and reduce risk while minimizing the stress of the cybersecurity skills shortage. Several companies are seeing the benefits of this type of cloud. According to one survey, 77% of companies adopted private cloud as of early 2016.
Private Cloud Security Challenges
With any new deployment comes concerns. If it’s a new technology, many of these concerns surround security, as is the case with clouds. Security, data protection, control, and compliance are usually the primary concerns facing business leaders, CIOs, CSOs, and other IT decision makers when it comes to the cloud.
While enterprises have the best opportunity to control security and compliance with private clouds, it still has unique security challenges. The private cloud is a new type of infrastructure compared to legacy data centers. Here are some specific challenges when it comes to securing on-premises private clouds:
1) Gaps in protection: When you have a highly virtualized environment like a private cloud, automation is imperative. As new VMs are provisioned, you will experience gaping security holes if protections and policies are not applied to them at once. In the private cloud, you can apply security through a software-defined or virtualized model that will leverage automation, along with the orchestration of security policies.
Related: Components of an Excellent Security Fabric
2) Changing traffic patterns: Network traffic very much resembles that found on our roadways. In a private cloud, it flows in an east-west direction between virtual machines, but traditional point security solutions aren’t built for that; instead, they protect north-south traffic. There is then a lack of visibility, which creates a gap in protection. Solutions must inspect east-west traffic, or internal threats can penetrate the data center.
3) Server wars: It’s possible that a compromised server may attack another when internal traffic changes. This situation can also be caused if your on-premises private cloud is part of a hybrid cloud environment through a platform as a service or other use case.
The private cloud option is the best model for companies looking for more control in a virtual environment. While they do have an opportunity for that, private clouds also present security challenges. IT would have to deal with changing traffic patterns, server wars, and gaps in protection. If you are thinking about moving to a private cloud, ensure you have the ability and solutions to combat these security issues.
