A white cloud, the symbol of Cloud Computing -- it sounds like something that is fluffy, serene, sunny and care-free. But, look again, that Cloud is beginning to darken and turn stormy making cloud computing something that you may want to reconsider for your company.
Security experts, according to a recent article in the LA Times, latimes.com/business/la-fi-cloud-security, say that outsourcing computer tasks to large data centers may not be as safe as billed.
There have been an increase in high-profile attacks to companies like Citigroup Inc. and Sony Corp. These have come in the wake of companies wanting to move their business operations online, or to a "cloud" model. Cloud computing is where all tasks are outsourced to firms with large data centers all over the world.
While cloud computing has a lot of money saving potential and it would reduce the need for in-house servers, security analysts are saying it might not be as safe as it is being advertised.
With cloud, hundreds or thousands of companies can be stored in one location, which makes it theoretically possible for hackers to control large amounts of information through just one attack, a process that the article called "hyperjacking."
Since hacking continues to yield profitable data, the number of hackers is also increasing. Low-cost hacking tools have computerized the hacking process for people interested in learning.
As cloud computing has expanded with many software and network providers now offering SAS applications (Softward As a Service), it seems to simplify your internal computing needs. But once you are in the cloud, you are at risk from more than hackers. Recently DigitalOne, a large web-hosting company, had their Virgina location raided by the FBI and several of their servers were confiscated. As part of an investigation of one of the firm's customers, "tens" of servers that were unrelated to the targeted customer were taken. Service was disrupted to hundreds of customers for over 30 hours.
Even if nothing else goes wrong, you are at the mercy of the cloud computing provider when it comes to security. Even the best of companies can have software bugs that will put your information at risk. Dropbox, a large online file storage service, recently was notified by one of its users that the account authentification mechanism was not working. Basically this left 25 million customers with files stored online with Dropbox vulnerable to anyone having access to their information. The company admits that the information was unprotected for four hours, but if the user had not notified the company of the issue it could have gone on much longer.
Before choosing to move to the cloud, a company should thoroughly review its entire network security infrastructure. Moving to the cloud would require complete confidence in not only the business's ability to connect, but also to ensure the connections are secure, the information is stored securely and encrypted, and a plan is in place so the company continue to operate in the event there is a failure. While the cloud seems like a resource among resources - meaning it seems on the outside to be the perfect option - it is no more or less invulnerable than any other resource. Cloud-based companies still suffer outages.
In response to the high-profile attacks, companies seem to be taking the warnings seriously. Most small to mid-size companies fly under the radar for the hacker community. Once your data is moved into the cloud environment where it stored with millions of other records, you become a target. There are some real holes in the cloud infrastructure and the bad guys are getting in.
The LA Times article talked to Alex Bermudez, the security manager for Beachbody, the Los Angeles company that makes the popular P90X workout videos. he said that although his company is adding security as it expands overseas, he has held off on switching to the cloud.
"There are a lot of good technology companies doing the cloud well," he said, but having his company's data stored remotely, alongside data from many other firms, "is a little scary."
