Security soars to the cloud

SECURITY

The air of general distrust and scepticism that used to surround cloud computing seems to be dissipating as an increasing number of businesses now migrate their systems to it. Ironically, the very issue that used to cause hesitation about the cloud has now become the main reason for companies to embrace it, namely security.

“For a long time, there had been a perception among business owners that the cloud environment is less secure,” says Lutz Blaeser, MD of Intact Security, the official distributor of Avira anti-virus and security software products in South Africa.

“While that may have been true when the technology was newer, it has since evolved and business owners are realising that their paranoia is unwarranted; that the cloud can actually offer their company better security than they can do in-house, on their own. If your small business is running between 5 and 100 PCs, chances are that you don’t have the IT personnel or resources to spare that will give you the sufficient help that you’ll need in the event of an IT security breach.”

Earlier this year, Microsoft released a study that was conducted by their Trustworthy Computing Division. It revealed how small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) are increasingly benefiting from implementing cloud systems. Of the U.S. companies that were surveyed for the study, 35% indicated that they had experienced noticeably higher levels of security since adopting the cloud, and they spent 32% less time per week managing security than companies not using the cloud.

More than half of the companies surveyed in the Microsoft study said that the cloud left them with more time to concentrate on adding new products and services that benefited their business faster and more securely. Among those SMBs utilising the cloud, 41% said that it had enabled them to employ more staff to help grow their business in terms of growth or sales.

To keep pace with this trend of cloud uptake among businesses and individual consumers, Avira has just launched a technical preview of its latest product, a new cloud-based anti-virus solution called Avira Protection Cloud. Still just in a beta-testing phase, the program uses swarm and cloud technology to easily detect malicious files on a PC.