Data management and big data
Capturing, storing, managing, analyzing and visualizing data are the daily tasks of the digital economy. After different phases, from magnetic tapes to client server processing, information systems have entered an era where they manage a great deal of data formats: documents, images, sound recordings, videos, scientific data, etc... This ‘big data’ era, which requires engines allowing fast, reliable and secure access to globally distributed data, is increasingly relying on the ‘cloud’, the practice of sharing a network of remote servers which are hosted on the Internet to store, process, and manage data rather than on a local server or a personal computer. Cloud computing specifically refers to a common storage space through which all the devices in the network can access data simultaneously. The use of Cloud computing technology not only gives cost benefits but also makes applications accessible to all devices in the network at any time and from any location.
The attractiveness of cloud computing is however depending on two main prerequisites for getting companies’ and individuals’ trust: reliability of the service and, even more crucial: safe access to data infrastructures on the one hand, data security management on the other hand, with a view to maintain the integrity of data and to make sure that it is not accessible by unauthorized parties or susceptible to corruption.
Data security and trust
Data security is the key restrain for the growth of cloud computing market as organizations believe that their data is more secure in the in-house data centers rather than on a virtual cloud network. The biggest challenge for the growth in the adoption rate of the cloud computing technology is to increase the awareness about its security aspects.
In cloud computing, data security methods play a crucial role as cloud service providers need to secure the virtual environment for enabling specific services for multiple clients. In the context of virtualization, the key security issues include identity management, data leakage (caused by multiple tenants sharing physical resources), access control, virtual machine protection, persistent client-data security and the prevention of side-channel attacks.
The future of data management
Establishing trust in cloud computing will undoubtedly require identity and data privacy through encryption. It will also require data integrity, with security techniques such as digital signatures and access control. Additionally, advances in cryptography are addressing the issue of confidentiality. For example, although this is still in the research stage, cloud providers can now process encrypted data without decrypting it. They can also use partial encryption to prevent the cloud server from viewing or deciphering partially encrypted data.
According to Allied Market Research, Identity-as-Service ("IDaaS"), a cloud-based service that provides a set of identity and secure access management functions, should reach a $2,2 billion market in 2020, mainly due to the growing use of multi-factor authentication.
