Cloud IT Week in Review: Insider Security Threats, Amazon Web Services and the Cloud

By Alicia Young
Web Editor

This week in Cloud IT saw a variety of topics covered.  Whether you’re interested in insider security threats, controlling your Amazon Web Services (News - Alert) (AWS) spend or remote backup via the cloud, there’s something for you. With that in mind, let’s take a look back at this week’s happenings.

The week began with special guest writer Eric Aarrestad, senior vice president of product management at Absolute, sharing why negligent employees are actually more dangerous than malevolent ones. Security threats caused by employees are on the rise, and are starting to become more worrisome than hackers.  The U.S. Department of Homeland Security defined Insider Threat as “a current or former employee, contractor, or other business partner who has or had authorized access to an organization’s network, system, or data and intentionally misused that access to negatively affect the confidentiality, integrity, or availability of the organization’s information nor information systems.” For more information on this growing problem, the potential risks and how negligent employees unknowingly enable attacks, check out this article.

Special guest Dale Wickizer, CTO and co-founder of ParkMyCloud, continued the week by discussing how to control your Amazon Web Services (AWS) spend. According to Wickizer, “Amazon Web Services (AWS) has grown immensely and recently cracked a $10 billion annual run rate. This means AWS is growing 70 percent year-over-year, which is staggering for a company of their size. Moreover, AWS recently doubled their compute power and now boasts 10 times more power than their nearest 14 competitors combined.” For all the details on how companies can unlock savings from this powerhouse, go here.

According to TMC’s (News - Alert) Steve Anderson, “Having a remote backup system in place is kind of like making a case for buying more insurance. Most of the time it will never be used, but if it ever has to be, will it ever be a welcome sight.” On the other hand, you have people who have decided to invest, but are now focused on the execution. For this group, it’s essential to consider a cloud-based backup system. To do this, you need to consider what it is, exactly, that you need from the service. You can read this article for all the information regarding the system’s value and usefulness.

While some diverse topics have been highlighted here, that’s certainly not all that went on this week. Be sure to head to the Cloud IT homepage for all the updates, and come back next week for the latest insights. Have a great weekend!