People often think of cloud computing as a storage solution that lets them update documents or other materials from anywhere without depending on physical drives or other means of containing the files.
However, people often overlook the value of cloud technology in the design and development realms.
Specifically, cloud sandboxing can aid teams through the design and development processes with capabilities that aren't possible through other methods.
What Is Cloud Sandboxing?
In the IT world, a sandbox is a testing environment that allows team members to experiment with code and not expose it to other parts of the network. Sandboxes also restrict what programs can do and permit team members to study code behaviors.
Cloud sandboxing offers significantly more flexibility than prior non-cloud methods. It permits creating customized environments with any operating system or version. Also, cloud-based sandboxes don't have hardware or size limitations. Both of those benefits make scalability simple while increasing a team's productivity.
Cloud Sandboxing as a Threat Mitigation Method
Many forward-thinking businesses use sandboxing in the cloud to address security issues, and a company you work for may be considering doing the same. Savvy executives realize it's necessary to monitor for physical and cyber threats.
This trend seems likely to continue in the years ahead. A recent Gartner survey indicates the worldwide cloud security market will hit almost $9 billion by 2020.
Fortinet, a cybersecurity specialist, recently released an on-demand, pay-as-you-go sandboxing model made for isolating running processes and performing malware analysis. This fall, the company released a report that indicated 79% of organizations suffered attacks in the third quarter of 2017, with an average of 153 attacks per company.
In a cloud-based sandbox environment, team members can test suspicious executables without affecting a firm's entire network. However, because sandboxes can't always account for malware that requires performing specific actions, you shouldn't let them take the place of all-encompassing security strategies.
Uniform, Beneficial Environments for Initial Development or Updates
Designers and development specialists also recognize the worth of using cloud sandboxes to maintain a standard infrastructure through all stages of building an application and deploying it in a public, private or hybrid cloud.
App development then becomes more efficient and allows team members to deliver finished products to customers sooner. Thanks to cloud sandboxes, developers, testers and designers don't have to wait for other members of an IT team to perform time-consuming network configurations or request additional resources for hardware upgrades. These benefits make application updates timelier, too.
Similarly, cloud sandboxes facilitate building or updating websites in contained environments without risking making a mistake that compromises your network at large. Furthermore, the lack of geographic restrictions for cloud environments makes it simple for remote designers or developers to contribute to a project without traveling to your on-site facility.
Cloud Sandboxing Increases Assurance During Emergency Situations
IT professionals need to make clients feel confident that if things go wrong, the backup system will work as planned. Cloud sandboxing help you verify normal operations and bolster customer trust.
For example, Schoolcomms is a company that manages communications between parents and education officials. The establishment needed reliable methods of delivering messages about school closures and student absences, even during early-morning hours. It insisted on coming up with a process that allowed for consistent reliability.
To achieve that goal, Schoolcomms data gets continuously replicated to standby servers. Immediate recovery is possible if the primary servers fail. The company's data center regularly uses cloud sandboxes to test applications that confirm the failover system works as intended and maintains data integrity.
Why You Should Use Cloud Sandboxing
It isn't sufficient to assume backup methods will always function as they should. Periodic verification techniques reduce uncertainty and facilitate early intervention to fix identified issues. Cloud sandboxing gives peace of mind to developers and makes clients feel more at ease.
These are some of the many reasons developers and design team members often depend on cloud sandboxing.
As specialty cloud computing companies and services continue to expand their offerings to meet the emerging needs of these professionals, the resultant advantages for you and other team members should go up, too.
