Simply Security - News, Views, and Opinions from Trend Micro

Posted on February 3rd, 2012 in Cloud Security by Cloud Security Blog | Be the first to comment |

When people talk about cloud security it can mean either 1) security for the cloud—security that protects your cloud initiatives, like protection for virtual machines or data stored in the cloud; or 2) security from the cloud such as Security as a Service that uses the cloud to deliver some aspect of protection, like hosted email or web security.  Here, I’d like to focus on security from the cloud that’s delivered in a hybrid model—a cloud-client architecture. 

Using the cloud for security can deliver faster threat protection and better security.  Traditional security has relied on signature files.  But it can be time consuming to retrieve and disseminate signatures across your network.  The time it takes to conduct this update creates a security gap and the sheer size of signature files needed to defend against today’s threats can burden resources and performance.  But with a cloud-client architecture, a thin client can be placed on servers and endpoints and this client can access the latest threat intelligence in the cloud, such as threat protection from email, web, and file reputation databases.  The security provider can make faster updates to the cloud service and you don’t have to wait on signature file updates to be protected.

With faster protection, you save money because less IT labor is needed to clean infections, there is less productivity loss while cleaning infections, and there is less IT time spent on tasks such as managing signatures, upgrading resource capacity, and managing false positives—not to mention costs related to security breaches. 

But what can you actually save?  Osterman Research just released a paper called, “A Cloud-Client Architecture Provides Increased Security at Lower Cost.”  In this paper, Osterman Research surveyed enterprises to get the estimated costs of these IT tasks for a 5000-employee company.  And the paper calculates the estimated savings if these companies were to deploy a cloud-client architecture using a single vendor for protection across their networks.  The results were significant.  A company could save over $49 per employee per year and reduce security management costs by 41%.  Take a look at the paper for an overview of today’s threat landscape and detailed information on these savings.

We’ve posted this paper on our Trend Micro Securing Your Journey to the Cloud—Physical, Virtual, Cloud web pages (www.cloudjourney.com) in the Physical section.  With a cloud-client architecture, you can leverage the cloud to protect your physical servers and endpoints without changing your current infrastructure, making this approach a great early step in your journey to the cloud.  Of course this type of security can also protect virtual machines in your data center or in the cloud—so it can continue to provide faster protection and cost savings throughout your journey.

Trend Micro offers a cloud-client security architecture with our Smart Protection Network, providing real-time security from the cloud.  As a global company, Trend Micro leverages our worldwide network of threat intelligence sensors to continually update email, web, and file reputation databases in the cloud.  This threat intelligence identifies and blocks threats before they can reach your network.  Using the cloud for security can stop more threats faster.  And this can equal big savings.