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SECURE CLOUD VS PUBLIC CLOUD [A GUIDE FOR SUCCESSFUL PUBLIC SECTOR CLOUD
ADOPTION]

Elise Walker & Ben Revell
Cloud Migration, Data Sovereignty, Data Strategy, Multi-cloud
13th August 2021

The pandemic has inevitably accelerated digital transformation. The national
slogan ‘stay home, save lives’ forced a change in habits, social interaction
turned to digital, and organisations needed to digitally transform in order to
survive. Such need for digital solutions has been seen across the business
world, with many organisations struggling, and many who embraced digital
transformation now thriving.

The move to digital has been evidenced across the globe, in tech organisations
and in the public sector. Microsoft, for example, have seen two years of digital
transformation in two months. Digital transformation has begun to accelerate,
especially now as companies realise that they need IT systems that can adapt in
line with rapid market changes.

A parallel transformation has been evident in the public sector, but the uptake
of digital transformation initiatives has been at a much slower rate. To learn
more about why the UK public sector is still afraid of the cloud, read our
recent blog. However, there is an increase in the number of public sector
organisations adopting cloud, even if the increase is not happening as quickly
as preferred.

Concerns over maintaining the integrity of their sensitive workloads and data
are causing digital transformation plans to move forward slowly. As they
transition to cloud, organisations are fully trusting a cloud provider with
their workloads, of which prior to cloud they had full control and visibility.
Whether these workloads include patient records, clinical research,
intelligence, military or defence – every public sector organisation has its own
sensitive data which needs to be kept secure, and thus needs a genuinely Secure
Cloud to ensure compliance and assurance with standards and guidelines.

Traditional public sector workloads, of all kinds, are stuck in a tricky
position. The desire to digitalise, motivated by clear and significant
enablement and innovation opportunities, is often stagnated by inhibition and
inaction. It’s not all about comprehensive transformation, even applications
which can easily be migrated to cloud still primarily remain on-premise for most
public sector organisations.

 



 

And it’s not just traditional workloads that need digitalising. The
comprehensive move to digital workplace is creating a much greater reliance on
digital, and the need for Secure Cloud solutions to facilitate. There are some
500,000 civil servants delivering public services, spending most of their time
on tasks which could be delivered more effectively and desirably through
technology and automation.

Approximately 47% of the UK’s adult population were working from home (WFH)
during the national lockdown, with many UK organisations now implementing WFH or
hybrid working initiatives. Ultimately, the COVID-19 pandemic has changed the
working norm. It is likely that this new era of remote working will remain, with
the digital workplace foundation to only grow further.

 



 

This way of working requires highly secure networks and connectivity for each
employee and organisation to undertake secure collaboration and data sharing.
This is especially relevant for the public sector. Without a secure solution for
managing day-to-day workloads, remote working is likely to become an
unacceptable risk.

The pandemic has undoubtedly been a key cloud adoption driver, and migration to
a secure cloud results in more time available for organisations to focus on
delivering genuine value and outcomes. According to Gartner, organisations spend
80% of their budgets ‘keeping the lights on’, time which could be better spent
on critical activities and innovation.

 



 

 


PUBLIC CLOUD VS SECURE CLOUD

Public cloud is often scrutinised by public sector organisations for its ability
to maintain highly sensitive workloads and data. Understandably, it’s difficult
to see a how something ‘public’ can be isolated and secure.

There is a real justification for this misnomer. Generic public cloud has little
in the way of security, and not much in the way of policing who is a tenant on
the same server.

That is usually the case in your typical commercial-grade ‘public cloud’ – and
yes, we agree, that solution just is not suitable for secure public sector
workloads.

So is there such a thing as public cloud for the public sector?

Yes. It’s more widely referred to in the public sector as ‘Community Cloud’ – a
solution which caters to the needs of those with more sensitive data
requirements through ensuring it is inhabited only by a community with similar
security needs, whilst remaining multi-tenant.

Community Cloud has obvious and ample cost and flexibility benefits, and can
allow for a synthesis of cloud solutions with hybrid cloud: public, private, or
on-prem. Being able to choose your cloud hosting location, cloud technologies,
and scaling, helps public sector organisations control their cloud spending.

But the main benefit is the assurance, something which all public sector
organisations need, and which inhibits 85.2% of organisations’ cloud adoption.

 



 

You see, most organisations see ‘Secure Cloud’ as ‘Private Cloud’ – but that’s
not the full story.

A generic, commercial grade public cloud solution, perhaps used by an online
retailer, or a video media platform, just cannot deliver the security required
by public sector organisations. However, an isolated Community Cloud solution
can be easily secure enough to host even the most sensitive workloads, and
deliver secure connectivity to government, through the PSN network, or even
military-grade networks such as RLI.

How can that be?

Well, it’s all about the security domains on which your solution is based. The
current guidelines for data sensitivity have been simplified to
‘OFFICIAL’,’OFFICIAL SENSITIVE’, ‘SECRET’ and ‘TOP SECRET’. However most cloud
providers will vary in their application of security domains and may have a
narrower workload classification capacity.

This really isn’t comprehensive enough to cover the dynamic and broad
requirements of the public sector, so an ideal Secure Cloud may offer several
security domains that can be connected together using assured software tooling,
enabled by audits, checks, streamlined processes and security-cleared staff.
This would allow you to choose the right security domain for certain sets of
your data, whilst still allowing for citizens to access services, and also
securing back-end data.

Perhaps the most significant difference between Secure Cloud and Public Cloud is
the consideration of protecting against external risk factors, such as cyber-
attacks, or the contrasting surveillance cultures of other states. A Secure
Cloud must be able to guarantee true sovereignty – protecting the integrity of
public sector data. This is especially important when looking at data sharing
and collaboration – safe data sharing starts with a robust, sovereign cloud
foundation.

 



 

Also, with recent international judgements like Schrems II, which has shown data
privacy is dictated by its resident country; states with different surveillance
cultures could gain access to non-sovereign UK public sector data, placing it at
risk. UKCloud’s recent State of Digital and Data report found that only 46% of
public sector organisations have reviewed their public cloud use since the
Schrems II judgement. Organisations must place priority on understanding where
their data is stored, with whom, and thus its assurances regarding security and
sovereignty.

Additionally, the report found that more than half of the respondents (53%) have
concerns regarding their organisation’s over-reliance on the limited number of
global technology providers, with 76% of these being in Central Government. When
Secure Cloud solutions are so imperative for public sector organisations, there
must be emphasis placed on ensuring providers can guarantee sovereignty. It’s
not anti-globalisation, it’s pro-UK.

Further, with the impact of Brexit still being felt; changing how we share data,
it has never been more crucial that organisations have visibility of the
residency of their data. The European Gaia-X project, creating common standards
for European data infrastructure to ensure everyone has full control over their
own data, including who has access to it and when and who they want to share it
with. This sort of project could be replicable in the UK if public sector
organisations were to wake up to the opportunities enabled by Secure Cloud. A
prosperous post-Brexit UK must start with adoption of secure digital
capabilities.

 


DEVISING A SECURE CLOUD STRATEGY

With Secure Cloud, it’s easy to over-focus on Security. However, the enablement
through ‘Cloud’ adoption must not be overlooked.

Advancing digital maturity, facilitating innovation, driving costs down and
efficiency up, and enabling collaboration are just some of the reasons for
devising a digital transformation strategy.

But doing that can be challenging, so it’s important to look to responsible
Cloud Service Providers who can help your organisation develop the right
solution for your workloads. The right solution must be flexible, cost
effective, scalable, secure and provide choice & options.

Does your organisation need a hybrid cloud solution? If so, can your provider
offer that? Will you need a mix and match of cloud technologies? Does your
provider therefore offer Multi-Cloud? Learn everything you need to know about
Multi-Cloud here.

Consider the importance of data residency, and maintaining the integrity of UK
public sector data through choosing a UK sovereign provider. Your provider must
be able to guarantee your data is kept safe and secure. Whether from external
threats, such as cybercrime and international policy, or through mitigating
internal risk, ensuring business continuity through Security Operations
Services, and reactive protections such as Disaster Recovery.

UKCloud has a commitment to ‘doing the right thing’ by serving the best possible
value to the taxpayer. Our goal is to encourage the wider uptake of digital
technologies in the UK public sector, and to make transformation happen. To plan
your Secure Cloud strategy, reach out to our Professional Services team today.
If you want to learn more about Secure Cloud, browse our cloud solutions, or
talk to one of our experts today.

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