I have found out that my Amazon uses the cloud which I did not know. It is under the AWS (Amazon Web Services) and has over a third of the cloud market holding 31% market share. Amazon Web Services (AWS) is a dominant player in the cloud market, providing a range of cloud computing products and services that enable companies to move away from physical computing technology and onto the cloud. AWS is a highly profitable and dominant player in the cloud market, providing companies with a scalable and cost-effective way to manage their computing needs. However, there are critics of AWS argue that Amazon is abusing its control of the market share by engaging in anticompetitive behavior, such as copying and integrating software from other tech companies. AWS is made up of many different cloud computing products and services. The highly profitable division of Amazon provides servers, storage, networking, remote computing, email, mobile development, and security. AWS can be broken into three main products: EC2, Amazon’s virtual machine service; Glacier, a low-cost cloud storage service; and S3, Amazon’s storage system.
However, I do not think Amazon could work as well without being a cloud because they have family accounts and Amazon owned products that keep track of search history, purchase history, and what items are left in users’ carts like Alexa. Alexa uses your account to help you and Amazon keep track of your data and interests across many accounts and devices. Even with the disadvantage of needing to operate on a cloud, it is also its advantage as it allows access to the account throughout the house with Alexas or Echo Dots as well as reminders of carts and purchase histories.
I do think it could be a bit unsafe allowing many devices to have access to your account as they could be breached by hackers or even used by guests or children in the house to use your account to purchase or change settings of your account form these very devices as well as sharing data possibilities by Amazon themselves.
Another cloud service I use that I knew of is Google. Google has their Google Photos, google Drive, and Gmail. I did not know that my Gmail used cloud as I thought it was just held in the account but Drive and Photos I knew because I am able to see my files and photos from many of my connected devices through my account. Google uses a software-as-a-service (SaaS) service to most of their applications like Gmail, Drive, and Photos.
Google uses SaaS to allows users to access any of their data by logging in to any device available which gives users any form of flexibility. It also allows users to not have to install or update their services since it is done through the cloud services themselves. It is also cost saving as users don’t need to subscribe or install other applications.
However, Saas will need two-step verifications or more for accessing any data or files on the users’ account(s). Also with enterprises the responsibility for protecting those applications and their data moves from internal IT teams to the external SaaS providers. For small to medium-sized businesses, this is less of a disadvantage, as large cloud providers typically have more resources for putting strong security in place. But this can be a challenge if a large business faces tight security or regulatory standards. In some cases businesses will be unable to assess their applications’ security themselves, for instance by performing penetration testing. Essentially, they have to take the external SaaS provider’s word that the application is secure.
I feel more secure with having to log in to access anything going into a cloud because I should eb the only one to know the password to any accounts and having multiple verification processes can help secure my account. However, I still think there are ways for passwords to be compromised and used against the user and used for any sort of reason much like with any platform and application.
References:
https://www.cloudflare.com/learning/cloud/what-is-saas/
https://www.investopedia.com/articles/investing/011316/what-amazon-web-services-and-why-it-so-successful.asp#:~:text=AWS%20provides%20servers%2C%20storage%2C%20networking,twice%20its%20next%20closest%20competitor.