The new normal: Cybersecurity and associated drivers for a post-COVID-19 cloud

Abstract

The cultural and technological impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic will be long lasting, and one of the major impacts has been the increased uptake in cloud usage. Even if organizations have not been able to make the move to cloud so far, it is part of the near-term business goals for many. In the social context, the cloud has a significant effect on human interactions; we are also saving more and more of our personal (and confidential) data on the cloud. During the first global lockdown in March 2020, the uptake in social media increased dramatically. It is predicted that the 'new normal' will involve a continued use of social media sites such as Facebook and Instagram as well as conferencing tools such as Zoom and Microsoft Teams. In fact, the cloud is seen to be more crucial to everyday life now more than ever before. While good from a revenue-generating perspective for cloud operators and service providers, this is a challenging situation to manage. The post-COVID-19 cloud represents a nexus of critical drivers including cyber-security, reliability, efficiency and cost that could transform the way the cloud and its associated technologies operate. In this chapter, we therefore examine the inter-relationships between these qualities, giving specific attention to the achievement of privacy and security. A proposal is made to extend the original CIA triad, which defines the priorities that should be given when integrating security into an organization, with a focus on the achievement of confidentiality, integrity and availability; with the achievement of these, we argue that there is an overall focus on reliability. The proposed extension, which forms eCIA, advocates that network reliability be achieved in parallel with efficiency. When considered together, in a planned approach that is not applied as a bolt-on reaction to a breach, there is a careful balance to reach in the parallel achievement of all objectives. In this chapter, we consider potential ways in which the competing goals may be facilitated simultaneously.