As more and more businesses move their data centers to the cloud, companies like Hostway – a global provider of infrastructure and hosted applications – is working to make the cloud safer.

Hostway (News - Alert) offers both public and private cloud storage and runs six data centers in North America and six overseas.

“Our mission statement is really about connecting businesses with applications that help them improve their business, become more productive, offer better service and offer new and innovative capabilities to their customers,” Todd Benjamin (News - Alert), vice president of enterprise hosting of Hostway, told TMCnet in an interview.

Another part of Hostway’s mission is to address security concerns that arise when using the cloud.

“As more and more applications and data move into the cloud, it creates concern on the part of corporations mainly about the security of that data – where does it live, what kind of controls are implemented around it, and so forth,” he said. “E-mail is a good example of something that has been more or less cloud-based for a long time, but I think that the general public doesn’t have a high expectation or understanding of security issues. Certainly corporations have and do. They have a lot more concern and scrutiny about where the data is going, how is it being stored and how is it being archived.”

“The issues that have come up are that as the network infrastructures become increasingly virtualized, you don’t necessarily know where the data is residing and where the transaction is actually being processed,” Benjamin added. “There’s increasing amount of scrutiny and concern over potential violations or vulnerabilities.”

Concerns are just as much founded in the private as in the public cloud sphere but, according to Benjamin, Hostway often sees more customers concerned with security issues with regards to public cloud storage.

While the public cloud has become very easy to use and is highly automated, the downside of it is there is less visibility, less control and more trust in provider than there would be in the private cloud, according to Benjamin.

Conversely, in the private cloud, there is a higher level of control and visibility and the owner of the cloud has more say over where storage resources are relocated and where transaction can be processed.

Whether a client opts for the public or private cloud, cloud security measures can be taken by cloud-based companies, just as Hostway, a leader in the cloud space, has done.

Some companies, like Hostway, hire independent auditors to audit both the physical and logical security and check and test controls. In addition, Hostway ensures that the actual configurations of its network protect against cloud security breaches.

“There’s definitely a lot of our time and resources that are spent towards securing the perimeter, securing the network and then monitoring it to detect any kind of incursions that might occur and then reacting quickly,” Benjamin said.

In addition to the strategies that can be employed from the cloud-based company, consumers can also minimize the amount security problems by being aware and knowledgeable about the company they are trusting with their public or private cloud storage.

“There is somewhat of an affirmative obligation on the user to make sure that they understand who the company is, what they are doing, where they are located and not to just assume that things would be taken care of,” Benjamin said.

As security problems take on new forms and happen more frequently than ever, Benjamin said he sees no sign that the trend will slow down.

“The problems will always be with us,” he said. “They are not resulting from cloud – just the nature of the problems has changed. There’s always been an element of hacking and people that are trying to take down networks so the form of the attack changes over time. The measures people take change, but it’s just inherent in the information age.”