Not host your own hardware or not get a dedicated server? Whether you host your own hardware in your home or rent a dedicated server, you are still responsible for proper security. Renting a VPS is a different story, you are relying on the hosting company to properly setup security for the guests. At least when you can run on bare metal, you can audit yourself. If I need to be able to quickly scale and do other "cloud computing" things, running EC2 or similar instances is pretty much the only way but if I need some real security, hosting on my own is the best option.