Google FAIL and the Fog Over Cloud Security

Late last year, when I interviewed Google Apps senior security manager Eran Feigenbaum and his marketing partner, Adam Swidler, they talked up Google's place in cloud computing and how it was in a prime position to make a difference with cloud security. [ Four Questions On Google App Security]

But when Google suffers a massive outage as it did last week -- followed by another one Monday -- people can't help but have their doubts.

Google content accounts for about 5 percent of all Internet traffic, so when it went down, many who have come to rely on its myriad applications to conduct business were dead in the water.

Meanwhile, attackers have been adding insult to injury by flooding Google search results with a fire hose full of malicious links, prompting the U.S. Computer Emergence Response Team (US CERT) to raise the red flag [ Attack That Poisons Google Results Worsens].

These are troubling events that illustrate just how perilous the cloud can be. But don't believe those who suggest this is a new threat. It merely validates the security concerns smart people have been raising for a very long time.

One of the people I trust on this issue is Chris Hoff, whose recent cloud security talk at SOURCE Boston attracted a crowd that included security luminaries like Dan Geer [ CSO podcast interview with Geer] and Marcus Ranum.

Hoff has warned repeatedly that companies are moving too fast on cloud computing without truly understanding what it's about first. ["This love affair with abusing the amorphous thing called 'THE Cloud' is rapidly approaching meteoric levels of asininity," he told me in one interview.]

Another voice I trust on the issue is Ariel Silverstone, a veteran of the Israeli Defense Forces with experience in physical and information security who regularly contributes to information technology certification exams and to newspapers, magazines and online publications like CSOonline.

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