This paper will use a fictitious scenario and portray the author as a software developer who works on various projects as a part of a team. Their company, which is small in size, requires a data storage solution due to increases in the size and complexity of the information processed by its employees. As such, it is necessary to choose the type of technology used based on speed, price, capacity, and other aspects and determine the traits that will guarantee excellent security during the vendor selection. The author believes that a cloud storage solution would be the optimal choice in the situation.
Software development usually involves numerous lines of source code, which can be stored in a plaintext format and take up very little space, and various additional assets such as images, sounds, and animations. Nevertheless, most applications’ data will be small in size when compared to information such as high-quality videos, and so ease of access becomes a priority over speed or capacity. As such, cloud storage becomes the optimal solution because it is easy to access from any location as long as the user has appropriate credentials. It is also safe from physical dangers such as theft or fires and should be protected from large-scale events such as natural disasters.
However, the possibility of access to the data given the proper credentials makes hacking protection essential. According to Zhu, Hill, and Trovati (2015), cloud storage security is segmented into virtual environment security and shared storage security, each of which consists of further aspects. However, a data breach in a large-scale cloud service would be catastrophic, and, as such, they take extreme measures to ensure security. Data destruction is the only cause for concern on the provider side, as the author’s company does not want data that should be deleted to be seen by others. On the client-side, employees should take care to secure their accounts, and two-factor authentication will likely be sufficient for the purpose. With the low amount of data usage due to the size of the company and the nature of its work, it should be possible to secure a cloud solution such as Amazon S3 with a budget estimate of $100 per month, and the figure can scale efficiently with the company’s needs.
Reference
Zhu, S.Y., Hill, R., & Trovati, M. (2015). Guide to security assurance for cloud computing. Cham, Switzerland: Springer.