“The cloud” has become an ubiquitous topic in computing over the last year, and web hosting has not remained untouched. The name may make it seem like a fairy tale, but cloud hosting has very concrete applications. In simple terms, cloud hosting refers to a process in which a site operates on multiple servers rather than on just one. This makes it an attractive option for sites planning to expand in the future. Before, expansion involved switching from a shared to a dedicated server, which required a lot of stress and downtime during the move. Now, expansion is virtually effortless (no pun intended), since any increase in traffic or usage is simply reflected in your bill.There are plenty of options if you’re looking to take advantage of cloud hosting’s many benefits: Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2), Cloud.bg, HPC Host, NetDepot, Rackspace, ReliaCloud, and more. However, users should be aware of the security concerns with cloud hosting (and cloud computing in general), mostly associated with the variability of the physical hardware. People are concerned about who has access to their data when multiple sites are being hosted on multiple servers. These are valid concerns, and cloud professionals have taken it upon themselves to form the Cloud Security Alliance, which identifies and works to solve different areas of concern. These include encryption and key management, identity and access management, application security, portability & interoperability, architectural framework, and more.