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Its been nothing but cloudy skies for the cloud computing space, allowing traders to play the bearish side of the technology sub-sector.

Even before cloud computing gained increased popularity during the height of the pandemic in 2020, the space was already seeing strength. More companies were moving their operations to internet-based applications powered by cloud computing platforms.

Big tech companies like Amazon and Microsoft were leveraging cloud computing technology to power their core operations. That only proliferated during the pandemic as more companies were forced to use cloud computing in order for remote work employees to access applications and interact with co-workers.

However, a confluence of events is starting to push cloud computing out of favor for investors. As the economy starts to re-open again despite rising COVID cases, the need for cloud computing may have weakened.

The ISE CTA Cloud Computing Index has fallen about 8% within the past few months. In addition to the economy re-opening, the Federal Reserve is looking to raise interest rates aggressively in 2022, which may hamper growth for cloud computing.

The slump, which started in November and deepened this week, is part market rotation, part economy reopening from the pandemic, and part concern that the Federal Reserves expected interest rate hikes will have an outsized impact on this particular sector, CNBC notes.

Higher interest rates can spell challenges for much of the market, but they represent a notable roadblock for cloud stocks, especially for companies that arent making money yet, CNBC adds.

As bearishness permeates in the cloud computing space, one way to capture the downtrend and profit is the Daily Cloud Computing Bull and Bear 2X Shares ETFs (CLDS). The fund is up 26% within the past three months, underscoring the bearish sentiment in the industry.

The fund seeks to achieve 200%, or 200% of the inverse, of the daily performance of the IndxxUSACloud Computing Index. The index includes domestic companies that deliver cloud computing infrastructure.

Across the basket, the cloud industry and software holistically has just been hammered, saidByron Deeter, a venture capitalist at Bessemer. Fundamentally these businesses remain the drivers of the new economy, and we have to remember that all of those trends that people were excited about a year ago in the 2020 market, when this basket returned almost 100%, those remain today.

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Play the Bearish Side of Cloud Computing - ETFdb.com

Thanks to the continued growth of IoT, cloud computing has great potential to continue to drive technological advancements. Cloud computing, born in 2007, has aided technological revolutions through 14 years of development. You may have discovered that cloud computing has expanded its functions in recent years beyond simple storage services, such as iCloud and Google Drive. These functions include IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS.

So what are IaaS, PaaS, SaaS, and how do they play an important role in cloud computing? First of all, let us look at the definition of cloud computing.

The cloud refers to a shared poolof configurablecomputingresources. It plays a vital role in integrating computing resources and realizing automatic management through online platforms. This means that users of cloud computing can reduce labor costs, and at the same time, can achieve resource utilization efficiency.

Cloud computing means more in commercial activities. Like all other commercial resources, the computing resources have become purchasable and have flexible liquidity through resource pooling. Their low prices also make them one of the top software developers or engineers options.

There are threelayers of cloud computing, including Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS), Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS), and Software-as-a-Service (SaaS). I will introduce them more specifically in the following context.

To illustrate the concept of the three layers of cloud computing, let us begin with an example introduced by Albert Barron, an executive software client-architect of IBM.

Suppose you are a caterer who plans to start a pizza business and wants to make handmade pizzas from start to the end entirely on your own. But, the complicated preparation work may make you feel stressed. Therefore, you have decided to outsource part of your work to reduce your workload. Now, you have been provided with three plans:

The outsourcers provide you with resources including kitchen, oven, gas, etc. You can use these infrastructures to make pizzas.

Expect the infrastructures; the outsourcers also provide you pizza crusts. All you have to do is to sprinkle your ingredients on the crust and let the outsourcer bake it for you. In other words, once you have customized your needs, the cloud platform will help you realize them.

The outsourcer has already prepared pizzas for you without your participation. You can package them and print your logo. Then, all you have to do now is sell them.

If we map pizza production to systematic processes, we can easily see the differences between IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS.

According to the picture shown above, it is obvious that the workload is decreasing during the service application process. IaaS > PaaS > SaaS

Simply put, IaaS is the bottom layer of cloud services and mainly provides some essential resources. For example, Amazon EC2, Microsoft Azure, Rackspace, etc. In addition to being unable to change the infrastructure, users can install any operating system or other software on the infrastructure at will. However, the installation and use process are relatively complicated, with high maintenance costs. Users need to control the bottom layer by themselves to realize the use logic of infrastructure.

PaaS provides runtime, simplifying hardware and operating system details and seamlessly scaling. Developers only need to focus on their business logic instead of the bottom layer logic. Platforms including Google App Engine and AWS Elastic Beanstalk show this feature very well. Generally speaking, PaaS refers to updating cloud-built operating software for the users. Users only need to download and install the software they need on the built platform.

SaaS means leaving the development, management, and deployment process to the outsourcers, releasing worries regarding technological matters. All the resources provided are ready to be used at any time. The internet services that ordinary users encounter are almost all SaaS, such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Its advantage is that resource utilization efficiency can be highly optimized. Because all applications such as the operating system have been deployed in the cloud, users can log in directly without other operations.

All in all, what IaaS, PaaS, or Saas can do is make our work and life more convenient. The charm of technological progress also lies here. In the world of cloud computing, what can be shared is both information and technology. Even if no maintenance staff is specialized in the cloud computing industry, the multiple-choice service platform of cloud computing allows you to use its full functions easily. This advanced technology can help reduce the work of digital transformations.

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What Are IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS? - IoT For All

by Netsurion Jan 14, 2022

Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) applications and infrastructure providers like AWS and Microsoft Azure have become the norm for organizations large and small. Enhancing cloud security maturity is even more critical given the proliferation of cloud workloads and a chronic shortage of cloud expertise. Instead of achieving the desired digital transformation and cloud optimization, organizations that ignore cloud cybersecurity gaps or underinvest can do more harm than good. Service providers are well-positioned to capitalize on cloud computing and cybersecurity growth as trusted advisors to business decision makers.

Author: Paula Rhea, CISSP, product marketing manager, Netsurion

This article walks through cloud responsibilities, the benefits of comprehensive attack surface protection, cloud security considerations, and how Managed Security Service Providers (MSSPs) can capitalize on this cloud security opportunity.

Cloud adoption has gone mainstream, with almost 95% of businesses using the cloud today. Top drivers for cloud use include:

Additional cloud workloads and apps mean sensitive data like Personal Health Information (PHI) and credit card numbers are even more widely dispersed. Organizations need to apply the same rigorous cybersecurity controls, compliance, and threat detection used for on-premises resources to cloud infrastructure. Still, there is often uncertainty regarding cloud security roles and responsibilities, and where to begin.

Customers may erroneously believe that their MSSP is responsible for virtually all aspects of IT and network infrastructure and security. Protecting cloud workloads and SaaS applications is a shared responsibility with MSSPs, end customers, and cloud infrastructure providers like AWS. According to the Center for Internet Security, a SaaS provider is solely responsible for host infrastructure, physical security, and network controls. On the other hand, service providers and customers share responsibility for areas such as application-level controls, Identity and Access Management (IAM), and endpoint protection. While its a shared responsibility, the end customer ultimately retains full responsibility for protecting their data and managing the risk.

Businesses arent the only ones to capitalize on public cloud and pervasive SaaS applications. Cyber criminals have quickly embraced the cloud and know how to exploit cloud and SaaS technology, looking for easy targets like misconfigurations on public-facing websites that are straightforward to attack and monetize.

Organizations use hundreds of operational tools to manage on-premises and cloud-based workloads and SaaS applications. This fragmented approach creates data siloes and blind spots that can impact security and operational effectiveness. Without end-to-end visibility and control, detecting and remediating threats wherever they reside can take longer and give cyber criminals a foothold into your infrastructure. A holistic approach to security analytics can also overcome another common data challenge: filtering out false positives to get to actionable insights that matter to each organization.

Augment your traditional technologies like anti-virus and help desk support to assess how cloud security can strengthen customer engagement organizations focused on improving cybersecurity maturity. These businesses understand that financially motivated cyber criminals will exploit security gaps, whether on-premises or in the cloud or a hybrid approach.

Look for cloud security solutions that:

The threat landscape has evolved. Investment in cloud security capabilities helps future proof your portfolio and prepare you for emerging areas of customer spend.

As you help organizations embark on or expand their cloud journey, its crucial to outline cloud security gaps and how to mitigate them as their trusted advisor. Gartner projects cloud spending growth of 23%. So protecting cloud workloads and SaaS applications demands the same oversight and resources as on-premises assets, albeit with the challenges surrounding a shortage of cybersecurity and cloud experts. To streamline vendor and portfolio complexity, you now have access to comprehensive attack surface coverage for endpoints, data centers, and cloud workloads. Learn more about Netsurions Managed Threat Protection with cloud coverage across infrastructure providers such as AWS and Microsoft Azure along with out-of-the-box support for hundreds of SaaS applications.

Author Paula Rhea, CISSP, is product marketing manager,Netsurion, which develops theManaged Threat Protection platformfor MSSP and MSP partners. Read more Netsurion guest blogshere. Regularly contributedguest blogsare part of MSSP Alertssponsorship program.

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Cloud and SaaS Security: Mind the Gap - MSSP Alert

LAWRENCE, Kan.Cobalt Iron Inc., a leading provider of SaaS-based enterprise data protection, announced that it has received a patent on its technology for analytics-based cloud brokering of data protection operations.

U.S. Patent 11206306, issued on Dec. 21, 2021, describes new techniques that will be implemented in Cobalt Iron Compass, an enterprise SaaS backup platform. These techniques enable Compass to optimize cloud and on-premises computing resources automatically, making IT operations more secure, more cost-effective, and better-performing.

Security administrators, backup administrators, and other IT leaders responsible for maintaining the service levels and cost-effectiveness of IT operations are increasingly turning to the cloud for various aspects of enterprise data protection. However, cloud resources are rarely used efficiently, which leads to high cloud expenses, inefficient data protection operations, and poor service levels for backups and restores.

In addition, cloud resource utilization is often statically configured and unresponsive to changing conditions and events, and some conditions (e.g., changes in backup operational behavior; changes in the costs, availability, or performance of cloud resource services; or cyber-events associated with a cloud resource) might indicate the need to use other on-premises or cloud computing resources to process various data protection effectively. As a result of these deficiencies, enterprises need a more dynamic way to reconfigure cloud and on-premises computing resource usage that is responsive to operational and security conditions.

Cobalt Iron's new patented techniques use unique operational and infrastructure analytics to respond to changing conditions and to determine optimal usage of cloud and on-premises resources, thereby solving the problem. They can dynamically adjust the use of these resources by IT operations (e.g., data backups or disaster recovery operations) based on operational behaviors and conditions (e.g., poor operational performance or cyber-events).

The techniques disclosed in this patent are:

For example, if there is a cyber event in process against certain cloud computing resources, or if there is a change in the cost or availability of a cloud resource, then Cobalt Iron's patented techniques can dynamically reconfigure cloud computing operations to use a combination of on-premises and/or other cloud resources.

"Companies need to leverage the cloud responsibly. That is, they should use cloud services in a manner that is secure, cost-effective, and operationally beneficial. However, few tools exist to help companies optimize their cloud resource usage," said Greg Tevis, vice president of strategy at Cobalt Iron. "Cobalt Iron continues to innovate in the area of dynamic, analytics-based infrastructure optimization, including the cloud. This patent discloses techniques that broker cloud and on-premises computing resources so that enterprises end up with the best combination of security, cost-effectiveness, and efficiency for their cloud-based data protection operations."

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Cobalt Iron patents analytics-based cloud brokering of data protection operations - Security Systems News