IaaS, or Infrastructure as a Service, is the industry term for basically running your network via a service model, such as what we have all come to know as the cloud. So rather than purchase server hardware, pay someone to maintain this hardware along with the software that runs on it, keep up with warranties, and replace all of that in five years, you run some or all of the applications that you needed that hardware and software for in the cloud and pay a much smaller monthly or yearly fee as opposed to a large upfront cost.

Iaas or Infrastructure as a Service, is what it's called to run virtual systems, servers just like you have in your office, in Azure.

Think of it this way: a thief is walking down a street lined with parked cars. He stealthily attempts to open the doors of each car he walks by. If its locked, he moves on. He doesn't even leave the sidewalk to try the street side lest he expose himself to viewing by the buildings across the street. He tries the next car, and the next, and the next, until he finds an open door on a 9 year old unassuming sedan. He sits down, rifles through the glove box, under the seat, center console, floor in the back seat, and takes whatever he can carry. He even finds an extra ignition key in the glove box, but he doesn't care he has no intention of stealing the car. However he just walked away with your $90 sunglasses, your $50 Pottery Barn gift card you got for Christmas, an iPad on the floor of the back seat, and worst of all several old credit card and banking statements you left in your center console.

So what is this Azure? You have no doubt by now heard of this thing we call the "Cloud". It's everywhere, but a lot of people still don't quite understand what it is. To put it very simply, the "Cloud" is just a computer (or loads of them, actually) that are not where you are currently sitting.

In the world of information security, there is a saying "security by obscurity is not security". The breaches that get national attention would have you believe, and understandably so, that hackers go after high profile targets and they don't care about the little guys. But in fact the opposite is true because the little guys (small business) spend less or no money or security, and worst of all, nobody is even watching for an attack. In my line of work, we call that the "low hanging fruit".