What’s your cloud migration strategy?
By: Brendon Rod
Tags: Infosecurity, Cybersecurity, Information Security, Tech, Infosec

Cloud-based solutions are designed to provide innovation, flexibility, and cohesion between systems and co-workers. Today, more businesses than ever are exploring a shift to the cloud.

On a recent episode of Cybersecurity Heroes, i sat down with Mark Dittenber, Director of IT Business Systems at Inform Diagnostics.

When deciding whether to migrate to the cloud, Mark says you need to consider two things: how do you support the business? And how can you do so in the most cost effective manner?

If you’ve been cloud-curious, read on for Mark’s take on how cloud migration can help to optimize your business — when done the right way.

Support for your business to reach new heights

Infrastructure requires time and skill to manage — two precious resources for a business. By moving to the cloud, these resources become available for innovation and business development, instead of being siloed internally.

Cloud computing offers greater flexibility for scaling. Cloud packages allow for increases or decreases in capacity as required by the business, often instantaneously.

Conversely, hardware purchases are usually contracted for 1 year, 3 years, even 5 years, making them less adaptable to changing business needs and hampering innovation.

Many systems are already on the cloud, like email. Migrating other functions onto the same systems can lead to better integration between programs.

Across industries, many functions and businesses are already cloud-based. With this shift, skill sets developing equally as people are exposed to more cloud technologies. Therefore, new recruits will likely be more familiar with the cloud and there will be an easier skills transfer than learning in-house systems.

With data stored on the cloud, business continuity and disaster recovery time could reduce from days to hours, according to Mark.

IT systems that don’t cost the earth

Data centers, servers, and hardware can be expensive investments. Data centers are physical spaces with a cost attached. Because a cloud-based server is hosted online, it could be more cost effective having a third-party manage servers like email.

Mark found that the data centers he managed actually sat unused for the majority of the time.

“At BBA I had two data centers that were essentially just sitting around, one over in the UK, one here in the US, that were essentially backup data centers. I had a lot of hardware that was invested in those data centers and for years they sat idle. There was no return on investment on all that hardware and in some cases I still couldn’t do a complete fail over to them, because I didn’t have a one for one environment,”

As well as the cost for the physical location, there are the additional personnel costs of running everything in-house. Cloud systems have support packages, which make the business less reliant on internal IT teams.

Change doesn’t have to happen overnight

There are two approaches to migrating to the cloud: slowly or all at once.

It goes back to what makes sense for the business, both operationally and financially. It may be the case that moving bit by bit is the best approach, taking time to assess what needs moving and evolving internal processes.

For companies with plenty of finances, moving everything at once could be a more efficient investment, according to Mark.

“Certainly if your company has got the money to just move everything to the cloud and you can do that, maybe that’s the route you want to take. But do you want us doing a lift and shift of essentially a legacy environment to the cloud? Just to be in the cloud, doesn’t make a lot of sense and probably doesn’t make a lot of financial sense,”

One you assess what will improve your services and what you can handle financially, then you can move forward with confidence. For Mark, moving partially to the cloud made the most sense.

“We may not have been 100% in the cloud, but we had saved money and still improved services and put ourselves in a position to when it did make sense from a monetary standpoint. We could have been completely cloud-based, but that’s what it boiled down to for us. It just didn’t make sense from a dollars perspective,”

Even if you do plan to move everything to the cloud, it doesn’t have to be an overnight event. You can put a plan together and figure out how to migrate in a way that will save money without disrupting business.

Mark advises that newer businesses should be developing cloud-based systems from the get-go.

“For younger businesses, hopefully you’ve been developing applications and cloud-based manners and architectures as opposed to doing what we were doing many years ago,”.

Do you DIY or hire help?

The process of migrating to the cloud takes time and skill. Consider the business case for doing this in house: does your team have the skills? What is the cost to the business of time spent on migration over daily tasks or innovation? It may be that hiring specialists in migrations saves the business in the long-run.

If you’ve decided to hire consultants, next you want to make sure that you have the same vision. As well as being able to create the best system for you, it’s important to consider the long-term plan, making sure your team can take over the process at some point so you aren’t relying on consultants forever.

Mark found that the best consultants both implemented the cloud system, and trained his team in the process.

“We got the right people back in the room and they helped us as we looked at solutions and stuff, and we relied on them very heavily to work through that implementation. And along the way, the requirement was that our team would be trained and learn how to run this on a day-to-day basis, as opposed to just relying on consultants forever,”

Creating a cloud-based team

Moving onto the cloud has an impact on individuals and team-work alike. People like familiarity; after developing a certain way of working, change can be difficult. It’s therefore important to address any fear or anxiety in the team.

It is the team who will be using the cloud, so it is important to provide extensive training as new programs are implemented in order to build skills and confidence in moving onto a new system.

To motivate the team, be clear from the start how new hardware is designed to save them time, giving more opportunity for them to focus on their role and enhance productivity and creativity.

“You’re freeing up people’s time and efforts to help do those things that are innovative, as opposed to trying to solve complex network problems that in most environments shouldn’t exist in the first place,”

He explained how a great way to help the team adapt is to involve them in building the structure and solutions.

“Task them with ‘I want you to make it run somewhere else, and I want you to make it better.’ They know how they’ve been doing it. They know the things to make it better. So putting them in a position of helping design that, as opposed to just mandating and coming down at them, ‘Hey, we’re moving to the cloud and this is how we’re going to do it,’ bring them into that process. Let them be the architects, let them figure it out, how to make their world be better,”

Having the team involved from the get-go reduces fears and means that the new structure actually fits team needs and work styles.

Combating cyber security concerns

The primarily concern most businesses have about cloud systems? Security.

According to Mark there are two factors which create vulnerability and increase risk: user error and being out of date. To mitigate the risks, it is important to take two steps:

1. Start with security training

The best system is only as good as the people who use it. No matter how secure, if somebody shares a password or opens malware communications, the system is compromised.

Security training around passwords, malware, and vulnerabilities is essential for every user of the system to keep it safe and secure.

“I’ve still got a mug from my very first security program that was rolled out to me as a new user [at Kellogg]. It’s got Tony the Tiger on it. He’s got a briefcase ‘top secret’, and it says: the security starts with you,” “You’ve gotta be constantly on guard for things and be aware of what’s changing. If you get an email from some place and you’ve never done business with them and it looks legit, that should be your first indicator that something is not right,”

Embedding this into company culture is the best way to ensure everyone remains vigilant.

2. Keep systems up to date

The second vulnerability comes through out of date systems.

“Understand your environment and at the very least make sure you’re on the latest near latest patches for everything. You got legacy hardware out there. If you’ve got an old switch, some relay doing something, whatever it is, those things are prime targets for people to exploit. And once they gain control of something, it’s no telling what else comes next,”

Cloud systems are regularly updated to include defenses against the latest security threats. Delaying or ignoring these updates could result in security breaches. Older systems are more likely to be targeted due to their out of date security.Interested in more resources on cloud security? Mark recommends reading The Art of Deception by Kevin Mitnick and Krebs on Security by Brian Krebs.

Tune in for the full episode on CYBER SECURITY HEROES on your favorite podcast platform.

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