Network Security Gets Cloudy

To a small business owner, keeping the company's computer network secure is a top priority. Network failure could easily lead to business failure in many cases. In order to effectively accomplish the goal of network security, it is important to be aware of new technology that may impact your network.

Take cloud computing, for instance. The term "cloud computing" appears to be a new media buzz word with no actual meaning. When trying to find an explanation for this new phenomenon, a lay person will likely become frustrated with the vague or overly technical descriptions offered by many so called cloud computing evangelists.

If we bring the description of cloud computing down to a less geeky and confusing level, it is basically process and resource sharing, which is not really a new concept at all. The idea is that several processes are running in the background to support each action in an application. Typically, these processes are all running on a local machine utilizing only the local resources. With cloud computing, the processes are spread over a wide network of computers (the cloud) using all available resources to make the application run more smoothly.

With many processes being spread over a "cloud", it is easy to imagine the potentially catastrophic security problems that may result. Imagine a virus attaching itself to one portion of a process in the cloud. As this process jumps around to find available resources, the virus infects each host. In a matter of seconds, hundreds of computers become infected.

Many security vendors introduced solutions for this problem at the RSA (the most used Internet encryption and authentication systems algorithm used today) convention this year. Cisco Systems, IBM, and Savvis are just a few developers sharing new products designed specifically to combat new cloud computing network security issues. In fact, more products are coming online each day as cloud computing continues to spread (precipitate?).

Cloud based technology is evolving at a tremendous rate and many security providers are keeping up with the trend. It is nice to see that a handful of network security leaders are stepping up to the plate and developing solutions to this potentially dooming issue.

More Information on small business network security software reviewed by Antivirus Software Review can be found on here on our antivirus review site. For now, software definitely seems like a better-weather option.