From personal emails to top-secret documents. Data travels across the globe thanks to cloud computing. These servers are tucked away in different recesses of the world, doing their job receiving, storing, and sending out information over the internet.
A trend that's been taking shape though, is edge computing, where servers are much closer to the people. According to companies like Microsoft, edge computing helps companies process mounds of data near its collection point, leading to faster response time, reduced costs, and heightened data security.
But heightened security doesn't necessarily mean data is safer with edge computing, says NexOptic's VP of AI Technology, Kevin Gordon. In a recent chat with The New Stack, he explained why.
"With edge computing, there’s a risk of losing data, not so much over cybersecurity concerns, but more with damage to the local servers," says Gordon.
“They could be prone to natural disasters or man-made errors that cause fires," he adds.
Despite the physical risks to servers themselves, edge computing does have an 'edge' over cloud computing when it comes to privacy protection.
The reason edge computing is considered more secure than cloud computing is quite simple: information is distributed between more servers in more places. Cloud computing relies on centralized servers to store huge amounts of data. So if their systems are breached, there's much more information for hackers to access.
"Cloud computing is vulnerable to the ever-increasing risk of cybersecurity breaches, which can lead to major data theft or loss," says Gordon.
However, he adds that it doesn't negate cloud computing's one major advantage.
“It allows for tremendous offsite computing, processing, and storage, and nearly ubiquitous global access to these resources so long as we have a network connection,” explains Gordon.
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