The implications of a cloud transition

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Moving to the cloud has matured. Fewer and fewer people are asking the basic questions. In fact, an argument can be made that many federal information professionals are well aware of basic Cloud capabilities.

Eric Trexler is the vice president of Global Governments and Critical Infrastructure Sales at Forcepoint, which has been involved in enterprise transition for decades. Because of this experience,  Trexler will argue many people don’t understand some of the implications of  a move to the cloud.

They don’t realize that the cloud service provider may be responsible for protecting the infrastructure, but the user must handle protecting data, monitoring access, managing configurations,  observing anomalous user behaviors, as well as monitoring system vulnerabilities.

Ignoring that responsibility means increased vulnerabilities for cloud-based systems.

Trexler suggests that questions must be asked about whether or not an application should even be moved to the cloud. Further, costs must be carefully evaluated.

Some have found that best practices for cloud security can best be handled in house. There may be systems that are “entangled” with too many on premises systems.  Some federal systems require being air-gapped.

Trexler also moderates a podcast called “To the Point.” He delves deeper into topics like proactive data protection, insider threats, and human-centric cybersecurity.