How Secure Is The Cloud?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Guest
  • Start date Start date
Status
Not open for further replies.
G

Guest

Guest
IT professionals often perceive the cloud as insecure as or less secure than having their apps living inside their own data centers. But perceptions don't necessarily match reality. We run through some of the questions and answers you should be asking.

How Secure Is The Cloud? : Read more
 
You haven't really addressed many of the security concerns IT pros have about "the cloud". Who potentially has access to my data, what controls are in place to keep that data safe (ie could a rouge employee rip backup of my DB and take it home)? How are other legal situations handled, such as warrants/requests for data from law enforcement, will the customer be notified, will the vendor simply comply, etc? What happens *IF* the cloud vendor goes out of business one day, where is my data (one would assume there would be warning signs before this happens, but stranger things have happened)? There are tons of questions with not many good answers out there.
 
Check out this cloud-based (Software as a Service) platform and its security architecture.

http://www.otakhi.com
http://www.otakhi.com/pages/security.html
 
This article barely scratches the surface of security issues surrounding cloud computing. It reads more like an executive summary than something I would expect to see on Tomshardware - very disappointing.
 
Cloud computing is overrated. Your data will never be secure in someone else's hands. Any encryption can be broken with time.
 
I didn't really see any mention of on-site encryption in this article, only transport encryption. Also, who assures us that claims made regarding security are entirely true instead of being marketing word-play which seems so popular these days. Only when a cloud service publishes results done by a third party auditor that I trust will I use them.
 
If you are in the external cloud with your company your data will be compromise.. I'm 100% sure of that... we look at this cloud stuff 8 years ago and came to that conclusion if you need to do it, do it inside your company not outside...
 
Security is always a concern, but my main concern with the cloud is around someone else being responsible for up-time / availability. Those priorities rarely line up across multiple companies. While you may recover lost revenue through a breach in service level agreements, you can't recover customer perceptions and experiences in the same way.
 
There's an updated version of the Ponemon Cloud Security Study available from the report's sponsor, Dome9: http://www.dome9.com/resources/ponemon-cloud-security-study.

Incidentally, Dome9 offers free cloud security for an unlimited number of servers. You can check them out at http://www.dome9.com. Essentially, their value prop is the ability to close administrative ports on a remote cloud server and make access available on demand. This is important in the cloud where your servers operate outside your traditional network, and leaving ports open exposes them to hackers, brute force attacks, and exploits.
 
Cloud computing can be so secure if you work with the right tools: http://www.drive-maxx.com/Pages/Product-information_3. Your data will be encrypted on your computer.
 
There are actually two fears about cloud computing that deal with security – data security and job security. Organizations might get comfortable with data security but their IT side of the house doesn’t feel comfortable with job security. The cloud was supposed to be this evil thing that was going to eliminate jobs for local IT departments, but truth of the matter is that job elimination hasn’t actually happened. IT managers and professionals are working with increasingly restrained resources under impossible deadlines, but that has always been the case.

http://www.dincloud.com/blog/security-in-the-cloud

This is another interesting article that discusses Cloud security in detail.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.