Last week I attended the Cyber Solutions Conference, a one-day conference and exposition held by the Federal Business Council, Inc. in collaboration with the National Cyber Security Alliance. The event was up in Baltimore and functioned to bring together government, industry and academia to concentrate on the collective responsibility of cyber solutions and security.
One of the things that many of the experts agreed upon was that the cloud was going to help improve cybersecurity for the federal government.
Why? Because the adoption of cloud computing means less datacenters, which means that the government could invest more resources into the security of each individual datacenter. Instead of using limited resources to build multiple “fences,” each around a different datacenter, they can instead use those resources to build a much higher fence around fewer datacenters.
Ironically, the day before the conference began, the actual number of federal datacenters increased almost two-fold. They didn’t actually build more overnight, they simply had managed to lose track of over 1,000 of them. According to an article published in Data Center Knowledge just hours before the conference began, an updated inventory by federal agencies showed that the federal government has 2,094 datacenters, nearly 1,000 more than previously estimated.
First off…how do you lose a datacenter? We’re talking about a room larger than 500 square feet dedicated to data processing…not your car keys! But regardless of how the datacenters were lost (or misplaced, if you will) they further exasperate the security situation. 1,000 more datacenters is 1,000 more fences that need to be built. The resources of which to build those fences just got spread even thinner.
And security is just one problem facing the federal government and their 2,094 datacenters.
As we’ve discussed previously, datacenters are extraordinarily expensive to run. They require large amounts of power. They take up a lot of room. They need to be cooled. New technologies require upgrades. They also need to be maintained and repaired. These recurring costs, multiplied 2,094 times, are a huge expense that the federal government simply can’t afford in the current economic climate and in light of our crushing national debt.
The presence of these previously “lost” datacenters brings increased urgency to the adoption of cloud computing in the federal government. By consolidating these datacenters and embracing cloud solutions, the government could reduce the number of datacenters they have. The result would less datacenters to secure with their limited cybersecurity resources, resulting in higher fences around each individual datacenter. They would also save significant amounts of taxpayer dollars.
Now that these datacenters have been found…let’s get rid of them. Can the federal government really afford not to?
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tagged: cloud computing, Cyber Solutions Conference, cybersecurity, Data Center Knowledge, datacenter, economy, Federal Business Council, federal government, National Cyber Security Alliance | 1 Comment »
