Cloudy Security
Customers have several concerns about the cloud. To my mind, data security, data protection, and uptime are probably the top three. We've recently seen outages from Amazon, VMware (this was a beta service that went down) and Microsoft's online version of Exchange. Clearly, we have a ways to go with uptime.
Security might be the biggest bugaboo of all -- that is, if we believe the Ponemon Institute. The company surveyed 127 cloud providers about the security of their services. The results are mind-boggling, to say the least. Some 75 percent of those polled admit their services don't protect confidential customer data. And 69 percent of providers pass the buck, claiming security is not up to them but to the customer.
I am more than appalled. The lesson here is customers must get service providers to detail exactly how they secure data. It looks like 25 percent of providers may be worthy of your business. Avoid the rest like the plague!
Do you trust cloud security? Let us know how you feel at [email protected].
Posted by Doug Barney on 05/24/2011 at 12:47 PM