Protecting information in the cloud

IT and business executives need to apply a risk-management approach that balances economic value against risks.

The use of highly scaled, shared, and automated IT platforms - known as cloud computing - is growing rapidly. Adopters are driven by the prospects of increasing agility and gaining access to more computing resources for less money. Large institutions are building and managing private-cloud environments internally (and, in some cases, procuring access to external public clouds) for basic infrastructure services, development platforms, and whole applications. Smaller businesses are primarily buying public-cloud offerings, as they generally lack the scale to set up their own clouds.

As attractive as cloud environments can be, they also come with new types of risks ... READ MORE

Released by McKinsey Quarterly - January 2013