Cloud Security Sector Heating Up
The rise of all things cloud related was inevitable. It has reached a point where many companies, and especially technologically driven companies, have turned to the cloud. The cloud comes with multiple advantages including better efficiency and more transparency. Naturally, cloud security companies have been sprouting up over the past several years. While cloud security startups are a dime a dozen, major players like Google and Microsoft are also looking to capitalize on the massive potential in this market.
The term ‘cloud security’ is very broad though. Additionally, security service providers differ greatly in what they offer to potential clients. Nevertheless, the market is still flooded with cloud security companies of all kinds.
For example: Box Inc. While Box is largely known for cloud storage and collaboration, and is extremely popular among home and individual users, Box has also captured a sizable portion of the enterprise level market share. Box recently announced their new cloud security service called Box Trust. This new service will enable customers to access Box security products, insights into its numerous controls – all with the power of Box’s various security and tech partners such as Symantec, VMWare and others. This will be extremely useful for enterprise level companies like Proctor & Gamble and GE, who rely on content collaboration in the cloud. Aaron Levie, CEO and co-founder of Box, noted, “Businesses can’t simply move tens of thousands of employees and hundreds of terabytes of data to the cloud and then think about all the security implications later.” As big as Box is (rumored to be servicing approximately 300 million users), they are still one of many service providers in this division of cloud security.
Another sector within cloud security can be, for example, focusing solely on end to end data protection. CloudMask is a Canada based firm that does exactly this, with attention to encryption and tokenization. CloudMask’s technology is able to protect data across several applications in the cloud and also on site. Moreover, they employ a “zero trust” model which does not trust anyone with the data, including IT admins. This completely eliminates the threat posed by governments, hackers, and even company employees. However, while CloudMask offers a pretty nifty service, they are still one of dozens of cloud security companies focusing on end to end data protection.
There are too many areas of cloud security to list. This can be seen by Gartner’s prediction of cloud security growth by 2016 to $3.7 billion. The expected annual growth rate for this industry is forecast to be 20%. While this may be overwhelming to customers looking for cloud security, at least the competition is strong which should further decrease pricing plans across the market.
