Cloud

We’re aware of many conversations our customers are having where the hope is that centralizing infrastructure in the cloud will eliminate many of the headaches associated with running software on-premise.

But we shouldn’t assume that cloud deployment automatically solves the problem. As AI makes it increasingly easy to discover and exploit vulnerabilities, the sheer attack area of contemporary infrastructure is going to become a much bigger concern.

Most contemporary infrastructure contains enormous amounts of functionality that a production application simply doesn’t need. Every unnecessary service, library and interface creates additional attack area.

That may ultimately make small, hardened on-premise deployments more attractive, not less.

Linux is probably the most promising foundation because it can be stripped down dramatically. Instead of trying to secure an enormous general-purpose environment, we can aim for the smallest practical operating system containing only what the application actually requires.

For technology leaders, the important point is: we shouldn’t assume that moving everything to the cloud makes security and operational problems disappear. The future may instead be about reducing attack area, simplifying infrastructure, and giving customers greater control over where and how their critical systems run.