Clients are relying on partners to help them work through complexity issues, get systems running efficiently and weave in security components  to maintain a level of control in the cloud, said Jeff Aden, co-founder and executive vice president of strategic business development at 2nd Watch. The Seattle-based AWS Premier Consulting Partner also struck a partnership with Alert Logic to offer its log management, threat detection and security alerting to clients. Alert Logic started selling security for users of Amazon EC2 (Elastic Compute Cloud) in 2012.

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"Alert logic is one of those security components that needs to be used for some of our clients unique situations and we see it as an important capability that we should be able deliver if it is needed," Aden said.

Cloud security products come in many forms from cloud gateways that can monitor SaaS-based services, provide encryption and tokenization of sensitive data to SaaS-based identity and assess management offerings that tackle the complexity of authorizing employee access to a myriad of cloud-based systems. Landing larger clients in an industry increasingly tied to regulatory oversight led Leo Corcoran, CEO of ClaimVantage, a Portland, Ore.-based insurance claim automation systems maker to embed security into the software development processes and partner with security vendor Perspecsys to help clients remove personally identifiable information and sensitive healthcare data from Salesforce.com. Eliminating the data was essential in gaining the trust of security and compliance officers, Corcoran told IT Best of Breed.

"The security officer in my world has become the person that can veto any decision on any cloud project," Corcoran said. "They almost never have to say yes to a project but they sure as heck can veto it."

Perspecsys, which competes with Netskope, Skyhigh Networks and other cloud security gateway makers can tokenize data, removing the sensitive information while still preserving cloud application functionality. The products also support strong encryption and can support compliance requirements.

Corcoran said the complexity involved in implementing encryption without breaking the functionality of other applications can be a challenge for some solution providers. Corcoran said that SaaS-based products, including the Web-based delivery of the company's own platform changed the business completely. The company's recurring revenue model is very strong at 60 percent of the business, he said.

"If you look at the cloud and it removes infrastructure and gets costs down and those are the positives about it, but the complexity is created around that data at rest and how to control the data outside the firewall," Corcoran said. "That's where customers find that they need the biggest help."

Prior to moving to the cloud 4.5 years ago the company would move slowly with large, complex projects. Today, the company is experiencing 25 to 35 percent growth, leveraging cloud infrastructure and the Salesforce.com market. "You do end up in a very reliable environment," Corcoran said.

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