10 Ways to Ease Public Cloud Security Concerns

Is the public cloud secure enough for mission-critical applications? That's the persistent question that IT departments struggle to answer.

For OpSource—not to mention Amazon Web Services (AWS), Rackspace, Terremark and others—the answer is a layer 2 virtual LAN. In OpSource's case, customers connect to the cloud using VPN clients or site-to-site VPN terminations. This makes the public cloud an extension of the private cloud, making it a secure, hybrid cloud.

For the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, which in 2009 had 30 days to set up and test the infrastructure for President Barack Obama's Consumer Assistance to Recycle and Save (CARS) Act, the answer was the CloudSpan CloudConnect Gateway from Layer 7 Technologies. This service let the NHTSA put its servers in the public cloud and add appropriate security controls. As a result, the program known as cash for clunkers was able to process claims and award rebates to more than 690,000 Americans who traded in old automobiles for newer, cleaner and safer ones.