Cloud Security In 2024: What Is It?

Fifty-three years ago, humanity made history by touching the moon’s surface—still one of the best moments in human history. When you hear about the technical details involved in the “Apollo Space Mission” project, you will think, “How did they manage to pull that mission off?” Compared to today’s technology, the task involved substantial hardware and

Fifty-three years ago, humanity made history by touching the moon’s surface—still one of the best moments in human history. When you hear about the technical details involved in the “Apollo Space Mission” project, you will think, “How did they manage to pull that mission off?” Compared to today’s technology, the task involved substantial hardware and equipment to complete the mission. Due to inferior technologies, it took days or even weeks to process a small amount of data.

Fast forward to today, people can send data (size ranges from gigabytes to terabytes) online within a matter of a few minutes to a few hours (based on the location of the sender, internet connectivity range, and speed) thanks to a technology called the “cloud.” According to Statista, between 2013 to 2018, the number of consumers of cloud-based services worldwide was about 3.6 billion people. Every day people rely on cloud technology to make life easier. But where there is an advantage, there is also a disadvantage. In the upcoming sections, we will see cloud security that protects your personal and business information online.

Cloud: What Is It?

In simple words, the cloud is the internet. The process of delivering a computing service online is known as cloud computing. These computing services include providing storage, databases, networks, security, software, intelligence, etc. The main advantages of using cloud-based operations are:

• Low-Budget: You will pay only for the service you are using. For example, if you need cloud security solutions, you will be obligated to pay only for the security service and hence the low cost of operations.
• Hardware-Free: Cloud computing allows you to work hardware-free. This means, that since you are working on the cloud (i.e. the internet), the cloud will take care of all the processes, such as storage and databases in the cloud storage instead of the need for physical hardware in the organization, hence a clutter-free workspace.
• Low-Maintenance: Since you are using the cloud for a dedicated process, and it’s hardware-free, the maintenance cost will be automatically reduced compared to traditional organizations.

Type of Cloud Computing:

People think cloud computing is the same for everything, but the truth is, it is not. Each cloud computing is different. There are some requirements, such as the type of cloud deployment and architecture in your service that will be implemented. To know how to choose the right type, you should know the kind of cloud computing:

• Public Cloud Services – From the name itself, we can interpret that public cloud service is a service provided by a third-party provider. For example, Amazon S3 is a public cloud service multiple organizations can use.
• Private Cloud Services – Unlike public cloud services, personal, or private, cloud services are for only one organization. That particular organization exclusively uses the resources. The private cloud services usually sit on-site at the organization’s data centers.
• Hybrid Cloud Services – Some organizations use both public and private cloud services for various purposes, such as security controls, database management, and application deployment. Hybrid cloud services allow you to transform your business by giving you options to transfer data, use applications between public and private, have more deployment options, and optimize your overall business structure and security controls.

Now that you have some idea about the cloud and we have explored some of the benefits,  we should discuss some of the disadvantages as well. The cloud is vulnerable to getting hacked, meaning that, compared to physical hardware, all your data is stored in the cloud server, i.e. online. Cyberattackers can access your online data with some malicious software. You can use a cloud security solution such as a cloud proxy to avoid that situation.

Cloud Security:

In a one-line answer, cloud security is a technology (set of rules, practices, and guidelines) to be followed by a person or an organization to protect data and applications in the cloud from cyber threats. There are third party cloud environment providers, such as Amazon Web Service, Mircosoft Azure, and the Google Cloud Platform with advanced strong authentication, data encryption, continuous compliance, integrated security, and advanced data leakage protection.

Apart from third-party cloud service providers, some organizations use in-house cloud security to prevent data leakages. These options provide several layers of security to your sensitive data. To provide another set of layers of security, you can implement a cloud proxy. In the upcoming section, we will see what a cloud proxy is.

Cloud Proxy: What Is It?

A proxy server is an intermediate server between the client-server (the user) and the target server (the internet). It acts as the gateway, since the information from the client-server, instead of passing directly to the internet, will first pass through the proxy server and then reach the target. Rerouting your internet traffic can help to mask your original IP address and make you anonymous online.

Usually, a proxy server is a hardware appliance, residing in the datacenter of an organization, but a proxy server resides in the cloud and is known as a cloud proxy. The functionality between the physical hardware-based proxy and the cloud server remains the same. The primary purpose of a proxy server is to monitor inline internet traffic.

Challenges in Traditional Proxy Servers:

• High-Cost: Maintenance of traditional proxy servers or commercial proxy appliances is high. It can become higher if you want a specific action to be implemented. For example, suppose you want to monitor the SSL traffic. In that case, the proxy provider will have a dedicated estimation of how much it will cost and how many appliances are required. More appliance means a higher cost of installation and maintenance.
• Compatibility Issues:  The most common issue of compatibility can be found at the organizational level and in personal use. Proxies have a configuration that may not match your local network configuration. In those scenarios, either you have to configure your proxy to match your local network configuration, which can take time, or select the proxy that will match completely and be compatible with your network.
• Tracking Your Activity: Your activity is masked when you integrate a proxy into your local system. But, your activity can be tracked by your proxy provider. It is always better to choose the best of the best proxy provider available in the market to avoid such situations.

Cloud proxies can overcome the above challenges. The main objective is to provide great, clean, safe, and efficient internet access to all employees, regardless of their working location. Cloud proxies can do this. You and your organization can rest assured that the cloud data are secured with a cloud proxy.

Traditional proxies provide several features that help kickstart small companies whose annual IT budget is comparatively lower than other companies. Standard HTTP/s proxies or SOCK proxies will get the job done.

ProxyScrape provides great and reliable residential proxies, dedicated datacenter proxies and premium proxies, which are suitable for both high-demanding tasks (web scraping) and high-speed tasks (accessing and streaming geo-restricted videos and multimedia).

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结论

In this article, we have seen cloud security solutions and how cloud proxies are one of the helping factors to protect cloud data. Data security is one of the main issues being handled in many organizations, and cloud computing security is considered the best solution to protect cloud data.

Cloud providers are taking necessary steps to improve the cloud infrastructure as a service, identity, and access management in an organization. It is safe to say that cloud computing services are the future, but for now, it is good to use either a traditional proxy server or a cloud proxy to make an ironclad strategy to protect your data.