One Thing that could sink a cloud by Carol Wilson

Views and Opinions on Green IT (Oct 19 2009) Cloud Computing

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   NetApp CEO Tom Georgens acknowledged the elephant in the cloud computing room last week, in his speech to the Silicon Valley Leadership Group’s Data Center Energy Efficiency Summit. Georgens acknowledged that security remains a major concern for those considering adoption of cloud computing.

   There has been a plethora of problems recently with loss of data stored on a server somewhere in the network, the most recent being the Microsoft-T:Mobile fiasco in which massive amounts of consumer data stored for access by smartphones was lost. Obviously, there is good reason to think twice about storing mission-critical and/or sensitive data in a network “cloud.”

   That’s why the people offering cloud computing services or remote data storage are going to have to work harder not just to make certain data is not lost or stolen, but also to prove what they are doing to their customers.

   Daren Orzechowski, who handles cases involving information technology, as well as branding and licensing, for the law firm White & Case, has been advising both would-be cloud computing providers and their clients that not only is security a major concern, but transparency around security is a must.

   Potential buyers of cloud computing need to know exactly who can get access to their data, and how it is being secured, Orzechowski said, and providers of cloud computing must be able to make sure their policies and procedures are transparent and are, in fact, part of what they market to the industry.

   In other words, it’s not going to be enough to just say that data is safe from interception and backed up regularly.  Even as we have all rather unwittingly become dependent on the accessibility of remote data to get through our days, we have also become intolerant of problems that interrupt our access to email (Yes, Google, we mean Gmail) or even voice messages (think AT&T and the iPhone).

   Consumer ire at being inconvenienced will be dwarfed by corporate rage at loss of access to business data. Georgens is right, this is one issue the industry needs to address immediately. 

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