What is data control? I thought it seemed like a pretty straight forward idea, but reading this piece by Justin Warren changed the way I conceived of it. I assumed that control meant that I could use my data however I wanted. But that is less about control and more about access and movement of data. Control subsumes these functions, but it also includes the ability to restrict that data.
With data stored in the cloud, the ability to physically restrict data gets murky. Sure you can control access, but often movement of that data across various servers is outside of your control. This can cause problems for compliance, especially when it comes to verification. It’s all well and good to trust a cloud provider, but when you have regulations or SLAs that require a certain data locality, you need to verify.
Justin talked to the CEO of Cloudian about this. Their S3 storage product includes a feature called “data GPS”. It might sound like pure marketing, but the functionality is actually quite useful for data control. With it, you can see where your data resides, down to the disk level within their service. You may never need it, but just the ability to call this on demand give back a certain level of control.
Obviously if data control is your number one priority, on-prem is hard to challenge. But offerings like Cloudian’s data GPS at least make the compromise inherent in the cloud a lot more palatable.
Justin Warren comments:
Do you control who can access your data, where and when? To design modern IT systems, it’s a question you need to answer.
Read more at: Data Control In A Multi-Cloud World
Data control in a multi-cloud world is crucial since it gives us authority to access and make movement of data as per our requirement. It helps you to keep your data safe from an unauthorized access.