IBM Systems Magazine, Mainframe - November/December 2017 - 13
alternative to on-premises data storage that, with the right MSP, can be secure. However, no storage platform is completely attack-proof. Nation states, hacktivists and criminal enterprises are becoming increasingly sophisticated in how they breach security. Their attacks take on many forms, including malware, spyware, ransomware and zero-day attacks that exploit software vulnerabilities. "You can't really button up a solution with security so that it's totally safe. As long as people are involved, with passwords and the like, it can be compromised, and that goes for cloud and non-cloud alike," Petta says. "Threats are constantly evolving and changing. When IBM deploys a solution, we say we can defend against what we know is out there. But new threats are always being developed that we don't yet know about." "An MSP like IBM has the advantage of knowing the entire data ecosystem. IBM has done it internally across every type of business." -Tony Petta, IBM Cloud Managed Services Compliance and Audit focal Solving Pain Points Some cloud environments have thousands of VMs operating on hundreds of physical servers. Managing a solution that large can be difficult. It involves regularly checking each machine to see if the security settings have been changed, and if so, determine when and by whom. These security health checks are a pain point for companies because they require identifying and solving or patching vulnerabilities. Plus, OSes are constantly being upgraded. For some clients, performing upgrades entails patching each of the thousands of machines in their virtual environment. An MSP can provide that service much faster and more efficiently than internal IT services. For example, IBM has automated the process to apply thousands of patches to ibmsystemsmag.com NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2017 // 13