cloud security

It's no secret IT is ambivalent about cloud computing's potential to steal jobs and user loyalty. That's no excuse for sloppy security negligence of apps in the cloud. That attitude doesn't come from hostility; it comes from overwork and the desperate wish that something new could happen without incremental additions to every headache IT ever had and never cured.

Some cloud computing vendors outsource parts of their services to subcontractors, who may in turn outsource to others. Here's how to know who has your company's data and how secure it really is.

Cloud computing poses unique security challenges. Here's how cloud-specific 'security incident-response teams' could help governments and large enterprises respond to malicious activity and make the cloud more trustworthy. Insider (registration required)

Whether you're a small business relying on Google Docs for document sharing or an enterprise moving your global ERP system to the cloud, you should demand that some common security and compliance requirements are met by vendors providing applications and services over the Web. These requirements involve who can access your applications and data, as well as the systems hosting them; where the data is stored; and whether the data is hosted on dedicated, rather than on shared, hardware. They also ensure that you get detailed logs of who has accessed your data and applications so that you meet corporate and regulatory standards, and they verify that data is properly encrypted -- a factor that's more critical outside the corporate firewall.

Symantec Monday widened its cloud-based security service to include Lync, Microsoft's latest instant-messaging client, so that enterprises using Lync can do anti-malware filtering and exert security controls for blocking inappropriate content along with basic data-loss prevention.

Most surveys show cloud computing is catching on so fast pollsters and providers can't keep up. A new one showing users with little enthusiasm except for specific services shows how big the difference is in segments that aren't really part of one "cloud market" at all.

For Joe Emison, vice president of R&D at BuildFax, scalability was the main motivator for moving the company's infrastructure to the cloud. But once there, Emison says, it quickly became apparent that IaaS was also a boon to security.

Surveys consistently show end-user companies are confused about how to secure, manage and buy cloud; if they left out the word "cloud," they'd already know most of the answers.

Cloud services are not secure enough for businesses to use, or at least that was the conclusion drawn by attendees of an Interop debate, although all of the participants acknowledged the real answer was more subtle.

Whenever the topic of security is mentioned in the context of cloud computing, it is usually discussed as the "big barrier" to adoption. The perceived or actual lack of security in the cloud makes it impossible for businesses to make the leap into this new computing paradigm. I propose a different perspective: Security will rescue cloud computing.

Upcoming IDC data indicates public-cloud users are confident in its security because they have less to lose than private-cloud adopters.