While highlighting the importance of using cloud services for businesses, Microsoft’s Head of Cloud Technology Mr. Ruediger Dorn shed light on a couple of cybersecurity issues that are detrimental to the progress of this technology. Speaking at Microsoft’s headquarters for East and Southern Africa region, Mr. Dorn emphasized on the need to secure the cyberspace.
At the moment, more than 1 million malware are created every day to infiltrate internet-based systems. It is believed that these attacks will mutate and leverage the popularity of IoT to deploy large-scale vulnerabilities. Also, companies are spending up to $15 million yearly to mitigate cyber-attacks.
Mr. Dorn also revealed that South Africa successfully met the criteria required by the U.S.-based corporation for a data centre. Located at Cape Town and Johannesburg, the data centres will be used to augment the delivery of cloud services, including Microsoft Azure, Office 365 and Dynamic 365 – all constituting more than 600 million installations across the globe.
To support a South African deployment, Mr. Dorn highlighted a number of requirements that must be met to allow the establishment of a data center. One key prerequisite is energy consumption as the facility spends millions in energy costs. It is estimated that data centers will require 140 kWh of power by 2020.
Another issue that was brought to light was telecommunications infrastructure. South Africa, which has access to high-speed lines and high-bandwidth networking tools than Kenya, among other African countries, must have impressed folks at Microsoft to support their decision. Additional telecoms requirements include a track record of power outages, what carriers charge for services and so forth.
At the same time, Microsoft looks into availability of technical skill, customer proximity and a regulatory environment that supports long-term business planning.
Collectively, it appears South Africa met the minimum requirements for the facility.
Asked about the security of their cloud services, Mr. Dorn insisted on the superiority of the system over competitors.
Unfortunately, Microsoft did not reveal plans to bring the facility to Kenya in the near future.
Finally, Mr. Dorn asked businesses to revisit cloud security by asking themselves if their security budget is scaling appropriately, whether they have visibility into and control of essential business data and whether they are monitory IT adequately.
