Book:Choosing and Implementing a Cloud-based Service for Your Laboratory/Introduction

Title: Choosing and Implementing a Cloud-based Service for Your Laboratory

Edition: Second edition

Author for citation: Shawn E. Douglas

License for content: Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International

Publication date: August 2023

This guide examines the state of cloud computing and the security mechanisms inherent to it, especially in regards to how it relates to today's laboratories. While cloud computing and cloud-based applications can enhance the activities of many types of labs, a methodical and meticulous approach to cybersecurity is required to not only get the most out of a cloud solution but also mitigate future data catastrophes. This means understanding risk management, regulatory considerations, deployment approaches, and the potential value of managed security services in the cloud. Additionally, the essential links between laboratory quality assurance, the shared responsibility model, and cybersecurity in the lab are emphasized. Of course, it's also vital to understand what to look for in cloud providers, as well as how to approach finding them. In that regard, this guide adds value by more closely examining major public/hybrid cloud and managed security service providers (Appendix 1 and 2), as well as providing example request for information (RFI) templates for both provider types (Appendix 3). While this guide can prove useful to even non-laboratory organizations looking to dip into cloud services, it focuses heavily on laboratories implementing and updating information systems in the cloud.

The second edition of this guide updates grammar and phrasing, tweaks a variety of historical statistics, tweaks information about container security, updates a few trends in hybrid and multicloud, updates information about cybersecurity insurance for cloud, updates information about the DoD JEDI project and the replacement JWCC project, and adds a subsection to Chapter 1 about edges and edge computing.

The table of contents for Choosing and Implementing a Cloud-based Service for Your Laboratory is as follows:

1. What is cloud computing?

1.1 History and evolution

1.2 Cloud computing services and deployment models

1.2.1 Platform-as-a-service vs. serverless computing

1.2.2 Hybrid cloud vs. multicloud vs. distributed cloud

1.2.3 Edge computing?

1.3 The relationship between cloud computing and the open source paradigm

2. Standards and security in the cloud

2.1 Standards and regulations influencing cloud computing

2.2 Security in the cloud

2.2.1 The shared responsibility model