Benefits of Cloud

Improved security

Challenge

Effective security enables convenient access to public services. Designing services to be secure from the ground up results in a better service for users and protects their data.

The challenge is: 'How do public sector organisations implement and operate effective and proportionate security against a backdrop of skills shortages and challenging budgets?'

Benefits

Adopting cloud services can help to raise your security baseline and reduce your operational overheads.

• world-class security: the cloud platforms of the hyper-scale vendors feature world-leading security technologies and controls as standard. Your organisation can benefit from this investment to raise your security baseline
• shared responsibility: platform-level security controls are implemented and maintained by the cloud provider. These controls are sufficient for many services and types of data, which allows you to deliver secure services without investing in, or maintaining, independent security controls
• secure services, not appliances: cloud-based security services can be integrated with your cloud services without deploying network-based security appliances. You are responsible for configuring the service, but not maintaining it throughout its lifecycle. What's more, the service's capabilities are likely to improve over time, without investment or major architecutral changes
• reduced complexity: cloud services are more architecturally flexible. The cloud acts as the 'control plane', allowing you to implement, secure and operate discrete new services without unnecessarily increasing the complexity of your overall digital estate. Well-architected cloud services allow you to securely and intentionally connect your services. With on-premises systems, the focus is on securely separating them at the network level, which can result in complex network architecture and onerous management overheads

It is important to remember that you must always be responsible with data and that your services should be secure by design. Cloud services provide world-class security and alleviate the burden of implementing and operating effective security controls, but using the cloud never removes your responsibility to protect data and services.