Cloud Services

IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service)

A cloud model where the vendor provides the hardware (servers, storage, network, virtualization), but the customer is responsible for managing the Operating System, applications, and data. You are essentially renting a raw computer in someone else's data center.

Example: Amazon Web Services (AWS) EC2, Microsoft Azure Virtual Machines.

PaaS (Platform as a Service)

A cloud model designed primarily for developers. The vendor manages the hardware and the Operating System (runtime, middleware), allowing the customer to focus strictly on developing and deploying their code and managing their data.

Example: Google App Engine, Heroku, Microsoft Azure App Service.

SaaS (Software as a Service)

A complete software solution where the vendor manages absolutely everything: hardware, operating system, application, and maintenance. The user simply logs in (usually via a web browser) and uses the software.

Example: Gmail, Dropbox, Salesforce, Microsoft 365.

SECaaS (Security as a Service)

A cloud business model where a service provider integrates their security services into a corporate infrastructure on a subscription basis. This allows a company to outsource tasks like log monitoring, antivirus management, or spam filtering.

CASB (Cloud Access Security Broker)

A software tool or service that sits between an organization's on-premises infrastructure and a cloud provider's infrastructure. It acts as a gatekeeper, enforcing security policies (like encryption, authentication, and logging) whenever users access cloud resources.

Public Cloud

A deployment model where computing services are offered by third-party providers over the public internet and are available to anyone who wants to purchase them. Resources are shared among multiple customers (Multi-tenancy).

Example: Signing up for an AWS account and launching a server that sits on the same physical rack as Netflix's servers.

Private Cloud

A deployment model where computing services are used exclusively by a single business or organization. The infrastructure is not shared with others and can be located on-site or hosted by a third-party service provider.

Example: A government agency builds its own data center that mimics the flexibility of Amazon AWS, but strictly no other customers are allowed on the hardware.

Hybrid Cloud

A computing environment that combines a public cloud and a private cloud by allowing data and applications to be shared between them. This allows a business to keep sensitive data on-premise while using the public cloud for extra processing power.

Example: An online store keeps its customer credit card database on a secure server in their basement (Private) but uses Amazon (Public) to host the website images during Black Friday traffic spikes.

Community Cloud

A collaborative cloud infrastructure that is shared by several organizations to support a specific community that has shared concerns (e.g., mission, security requirements, policy, and compliance considerations).

Example: Three different hospitals sharing a cloud network specifically designed to handle HIPAA-compliant patient records.

BaaS (Backup as a Service)

A strategy where an organization purchases the service of backing up its data to a third-party cloud provider rather than performing backups on their own on-premise tape drives or servers. This ensures data is stored off-site for disaster recovery.