For smart cyber criminals, the combination of cloud computing and the network of data on the Internet are perfect for hacking. The cloud environment is more vulnerable to hack as compared to the regular remote server.

Keeping in mind the new malware attacks on the cloud, Skytap, a provider of self-service cloud automation solutions, has achieved strong customer adoption of its self-service hybrid cloud offering, signing many enterprise customers including Wolters Kluwer, Purdue University (News - Alert) and Trek Bicycles.

 According to a press release, the company has also announced the availability of new security features including IP access limits, browser validation and user email verification.

David Anderson, director of software quality assurance at Wolters Kluwer Financial Services, said, “Our business required the ability to manage cloud environments with the security and control of our IT policies while benefiting from the scale and flexibility provided by a cloud solution. Skytap allowed us to securely connect our in house environments to the cloud. We now have on-demand, self-service access to our cloud environments and realized a substantial reduction in set-up time, operational costs and increased our testing agility to bring new releases to market faster.”

Skytap offers a comprehensive security policy and cloud control solution for IT organizations. Skytap is introducing IP Access (News - Alert) Limits, Browser Validation, Email Validation to its security and cloud control solution for IT organizations.

Sundar Raghavan, chief product and marketing officer at Skytap, said, “Enterprises are seeking stronger security policy management, access controls and role based permission management as they adopt the cloud model. The company is enabling IT organizations to implement access control policies in the cloud that will give them the same visibility and access control they get in in-house systems.”

Skytap's hybrid cloud offering has enabled enterprise customers to  implement hybrid cloud architectures and to accelerate cloud integration with in-house systems and reduce the IT support burden for managing cloud environments.

Application developers can now develop and test advanced enterprise applications using Skytap Cloud and connect to corporate databases and file systems securely. They can now create virtual machines with up to 8 CPUs and 32 GB RAM (News - Alert)

The company also released configurable options for virtual data centers (VDCs) and advanced networking.

 In other company news, TMCnet reported that Skytap has received an oversubscribed $10 million Series C round of funding for marketing activity.

Want to learn more about cloud communications? Then be sure to attend the Cloud Communications Summit, collocated with TMC’s (News - Alert) ITEXPO West 2011, taking place Sept. 13-15, 2011, in Austin, Texas. The Cloud Communications Summit will address a growing need of businesses to integrate and leverage cloud based communications applications, process enhancement techniques, and network based communications interfaces and architectures. To register, click here.