Barracuda: Cloud computing fuels innovation

Cloud computing is fuelling innovation, not just by making IT cheaper for start-ups but in the security sphere as well, according to an expert in the field.

In terms of utility computing, the cloud allows people with great concepts and not much money to get their ideas off of the ground by making IT affordable, said Dr Paul Judge, chief research officer and vice president of cloud services at Barracuda Networks.

Rather than having to get a substantial sum together to form a start-up, entrepreneurs can now pay a monthly fee to keep their firms and their ideas running, Judge explained to IT PRO, during a Barracuda summit today in Austria.

"All of a sudden, an idea that would have otherwise died, you actually can afford to innovate [with it]," he said.

"Every day there are lots of ideas and start-ups like that, that are able to actually get off the ground because of how cloud computing has just made it efficient."

In the security area, by using a hybrid model, the cloud enables firms to look at their network from both the inside and the outside, he noted.

"Traditionally we sat inside our organisation and tried to make sure we were safe," said Judge, who started off his career working on NASA'a IT systems.

"With the cloud you can now have functionality that is outside your network, looking back in to help you secure your network. When you think about monitoring, management, vulnerability assessment those are some things that make a lot of sense to do from the outside, instead of doing it from the inside."

Sandboxing, which features in Barracuda's cloud-based web filtering service, is an example of the new possibilities that cloud computing brings for security, Judge noted.

This technique can take foreign JavaScript and, rather than letting it go straight into the browser and risk the user being presented with malicious code, place it into a secure area in the cloud and inspect it further.

"Now we are actually able to run that sandbox in the cloud and so that means we can do much deeper analysis within that sandbox," Judge explained.

"This is something that people have tried to do over the years and people have tried to do it in software, they've tried to do it in appliances, but there is a limitation when you have so much computing power. But now you can have racks of servers focused on it and you can use those same racks for people in New York as well as London."

He admitted sandboxing remained expensive and difficult to do a sentiment recently expressed by Adobe's director for product security and privacy Brad Arkin.