In looking for the most intriguing topics to address related to cloud for 2023, I began by exploring what were the most significant challenges for cloud technologies and found that one of the most repetitively stated challenges related to “security” and maintaining “data integrity” (Fig. 1). Data breaches remain one of the most significant threats facing cloud computing today.
What did I find in my search? Most reports predicted that cybercriminals would continue to target the cloud as a means of gaining access to sensitive information. Summarily, the kinds of sensitive information included customer data, financial records and proprietary business intelligence.
Figuratively, most organizations today operate to some degree in the cloud. While employing the cloud simplifies operations in many ways, this comes with its own set of risks that can significantly impact the bottom line for enterprise and similar scaled organizations. From a report published by Lookout, an IBM Security Cost of a Data Breach Report (prepared in 2021), found that “the average cost of a public cloud breach was $4.8 million.”
The Challenges
A significant grouping of priorities related to IT initiatives now involve cloud services and tools, automation and DevOps—which continually evolve as leaders seek to unlock new efficiencies from the front office to the back and every space between. The findings of a CyberArk report recently issued suggested that this technology adoption rate will see a 2.4x growth in human and machine resources, which is coupled with a 68% increase in the deployment of SaaS tools for such services.
This surely means that utilizing the cloud for operational activities is essential, as when trying to build out the scale of similar services on-prem (including construction, supporting and managing) is found to be many times more costly. Furthermore, of the many elements incorporated into developing a SaaS environment or their application is that of creating a set of “secure” authentication steps.
Creating identities that can authenticate the human user(s) and/or the machine(s) involved, can be automated in the cloud, which will significantly reduce the hands-on requirements otherwise required for upkeep, deployment and maintenance. The growing number of SaaS activities businesses must address in the digital future will be highly dependent upon these evolving cloud services.
What Can We Expect?
Trending technologies in 2023 included the Internet of Things (IoT), blockchain, artificial intelligence, machine learning, Kubernetes and docker. With many of those technologies already in place and in full use, we can expect other new technologies such as quantum computing, cloud gaming, augmented and virtual reality coming forth in the near term/upcoming years.
What will cloud computing be like in 2024? Expect a nonstop evolution of new capabilities enhanced by consumer growth, automation, virtuality and more.
Despite these advances, the top challenges expected in cloud computing seem to remain almost the same as they were in previous near-term years (i.e., that last three to five years). We distinguish cloud computing as characterized by those processes and components associated with “deploying computing services,” such as servers, storage, software, analytics, databases, networking and intelligence. Such services rely upon deployment, and of operations over the internet, which characteristically offers flexible resources, faster innovation and economies of scale.
Data Security and Privacy
At the top of the challenges chart (Fig. 2) continues to be that of data security and privacy (including customer trust).
Not unexpected in this group is the challenge of password security and protection. Try as we might with multifactor authentication (MFA), people still don’t fully understand or recognize the importance of having a secure, unique and protected password. A 14-character, mixed alpha+numeric+special-character password is essential when working within any compute environment, including the cloud. Continually changing your password—while time-consuming—is an effective (and essential) part of maintaining that security.
We note that not all cloud providers can assure 100% data privacy, so users should understand the values in privacy and security protection (see Fig. 3 for validation). Another methodology to protect your data privacy is to routinely install and implement the latest software updates, especially on the network hardware and configure those components properly and fully.
Cybersecurity compliance includes certain compliance processes and ensures that the provider(s) meet industry standards, regulations, legislation—including international policies and procedures. The NIST Cybersecurity Framework and ISO 27001 are both excellent guidelines for the prevention of cyberattacks and compliance. Even if you don’t believe you’ll be “working” internationally, you should still follow such guidelines as data may indeed cross over to those parts of the world without you knowing it.
Multicloud Environments
Given the growing number of cloud service providers, users will be expecting to work amongst more than one cloud platform, even sometimes to support the same applications or activity. A “multiple public cloud services environment” includes services provided from different vendors within one architecture at the same time. For instance, a business might use AWS for data storage, Google Cloud Platform for development and testing, and then Microsoft Azure for disaster recovery.
We also hear the term “multicloud computing.” Fundamentally, there are three main types of cloud computing: public cloud, private cloud and hybrid cloud. Today, using one or more of these is not uncommon. (I discussed multimedia cloud and hybrid cloud uses and values in my October 2021 column, “Evolution of Multimedia Cloud;” my February 2022 column, “Cloud Production for Media,” and December 2023 column on “Hybrid Cloud Choices”.)
A private cloud is one built, usually by the owner, for its own independent uses and it most likely would be built on-prem. Public clouds have the most familiar and recognizable cloud service naming with provisions from Google Cloud, Microsoft Azure, Amazon Web Services (AWS), IBM Cloud, Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) and others.
Each of these public offerings differs in varying ways and can offer hybrid cloud services and migration paths from one platform to another. Be sure to crosscheck the capabilities from each vendor’s offerings when developing a cloud architecture for your uses.
Performance, Reliability and Availability
Interoperability, flexibility and performance are another set of challenges but possibly less expected are the performance and reliability/availability of the services to, from and within the cloud. Transferring large data sets (volumes) between cloud data servers depends upon sufficient internet bandwidth, which is a common problem.
On the topic of availability—as with any internet service provider—getting to (or from) the host is usually a core “bottleneck” concern that is essentially out of the user’s control. And of course, once “in the (public) cloud” a user is now in a somewhat “hands off” world where the internal architecture of the cloud is something that you can only minimally affect—and are often determined by the SLAs written into the cloud agreement.
What are the Drawbacks?
A more serious and probably obvious challenge will be the lack of knowledge. Finding the appropriate cloud talent is another common challenge when maneuvering the cloud computing environment.
As workloads increase through cloud dependencies, so do the number of tools available to global users. Enterprises, regardless of size, need strong expertise in order to properly utilize a growing set of tools and capabilities in the cloud. The solution here is to use/hire cloud professionals who have DevOps and automation specializations and experience.
Karl Paulsen is a frequent TV Tech contributor who has been writing about storage, the cloud and media solution technologies for the past three decades. He can be reached at karl@ivideoserver.tv.
