Category: Cloud

Cloud solutions offer “revolutionary potential” for small and mid-size businesses, says Mark White, chief technology officer for Deloitte Consulting LPP’s Technology practice. “The cloud is a real boon to small business.”

The cloud can be a disruptive force that can help small businesses punch bigger than their size,” says Charles Babcock, author of Management Strategies for the Cloud Revolution: How Cloud Computing Is Transforming Business and Why You Can’t Afford to Be Left Behind (McGraw-Hill, 2010).

Understanding how your employees are deploying cloud computing and establishing some sense of control are critical to managing security risks, say experts. It’s not just a matter of cataloging cloud services embraced by your IT department or at an enterprise level, cautions Babcock. Just because you haven’t embraced cloud computing doesn’t mean your employees aren’t working in the cloud.

White often has conversations with CIOs who tell him their organizations don’t use cloud computing, only to find the company’s employees are doing so. “For employees, some enterprise issues of standardization, information privacy and security may not be at the top of their list,” White says. Be aware that employees might be reluctant to reveal what they’re doing in the cloud if they know they’re violating company policy or taking risks.

In the Ponemon survey, 68 percent of IT professionals thought cloud computing is too risky for financial information and intellectual property. “It’s not a very good defense for the CIO to stand up in court and say, ‘I had no idea where the data was.'” * Vet cloud service providers. “If you don’t feel that way with the cloud vendor you’re talking to, you probably need to go back to the drawing board and find someone you can trust.”

Although cloud computing might pose something of a “security minefield” right now, businesses have little choice but to catch up with the technologies their employees are embracing, says Ponemon.

http://technology.inc.com/security/articles/201008/cloud.html

Businesses are only just starting to realize the benefits of cloud computing, and rapid growth cannot occur until vendors address particular obstacles, according to a recent report from the World Economic Forum, the Irish Times relays. The cloud has been lauded for helping businesses reduce their costs and improve overall…

OSF officials hope that business and security users will be able to apply the independent data provided to better assess security risks related to the cloud. The goal is to bring enhanced visibility and transparency to cloud security.

A recent survey by LogLogic showed that companies in the financial industry are slow to adopt cloud services out of worries about increasing government security regulations that cloud providers may not be able to handle. “Our survey revealed that 60 percent of respondents had concerns about security and transparency issues related to the cloud,” Dimitri McKay, security architect for LogLogic, told TechNewsWorld.

Cloud technology right now is prompting many emotional concerns that only grow in the face of FUD (fear, uncertainty and doubt), noted Jake Kouns, chairman and CEO of the Open Security Foundation. “I can’t say either way that the cloud is any more or less secure than traditional network storage…. Those who say otherwise don’t have all the facts,” Kouns told TechNewsWorld.

In some respects the cloud is like a no-man’s land where no law and order is in place. No one entity is in charge, he mused. “Not all providers agree on security requirements and do it the same way…. There is no one standard,” he said.

Ultimately, it is up to cloud customers to know about cloud security. But that is a costly research task that cloud vendors are better able to handle, suggested Michael Sutton, vice president of security research for Zscaler. “There is no straight answer to the cloud security question… The cloud can be and should be more secure than it is,” Sutton told TechNewsWorld.

The key lies in the hands of customers.

In July, cloud security firm Zscaler announced the availability of a fully integrated email and Web security service that adds email security to its existing Web and cloud security portfolios.

Data security on a network is different than securing the data stored on the cloud. It is harder to do, Sutton offered. Having a security firm to handle it requires a company’s IT department to have a unique mindset about security, said Sutton. “The difference is in the controls used. A company using the cloud cannot risk having inferior security. But there are no guarantees,” he said.

It is easier to understand the unique nature of cloud security issues when you view them in the context of a housing environment. The difference between traditional network and cloud storage security is much like the differences in securing a single-family home and a condo. For instance, the same controls that we use to lock down a single house are not going to work as well in the condo environment, suggested Kouns. You can protect the perimeter with firewalls and intrusion protection and anything else you want to do. “But once you get inside, it’s kind of wide open.” You have to apply differently the same controls and security.

Perhaps the most complicating factor in figuring out how to better lock down cloud storage is what security experts call the cloud’s multi-tenant environment. There are no standards on how clouds interact, noted Kouns. “Regulatory compliance agencies need to see virtualization and cloud platforms as more than a new toy,” said LogLogic’s McKay about their security issues.

OSF’s new Cloutage Project seeks to foster a solution to the cloud security question.

http://www.technewsworld.com/story/70576.html?wlc=1281417702

Guy Rosen, who does a quarterly calculation of the top 500,000 web sites hosted on cloud platforms, also has tracked impressive growth.

As of Aug. 2010, his research shows 3,011 sites hosted on Amazon EC2, and 2,825 hosted on Rackspace Cloud Servers.

It’s easy to get lost in the exact numbers, but the constant growth tells the story: Cloud computing (of the externally hosted variety) is growing at a breakneck speed, and AWS appears to have the lion’s share of the market.

Yes, the present revenue numbers are low compared with traditional IT, but the sky is the limit for cloud stakeholders.

http://gigaom.com/2010/08/08/whatever-the-numbers-cloud-growth-is-skyrocketing/

If nothing else, it helps them ask questions of the service provider.

CloudFail also covers services such as Twitter and Basecamp. In this respect, CloudFail is not purely for cloud computing service providers. Twitter is a microblogging network, not a cloud service. It actually has its own data center at NTT America. But its inclusion does reflect that many view Twitter and Amazon Web Services in the same category.

With more sophisticated third-party reporting, benchmarks can be established that rate services. That would be valuable information for a customer to have.

http://www.readwriteweb.com/cloud/2010/08/cloudfail-how-to-know-when-a-c.php

As vendors optimize their applications for mobile use, social CRM is one the frontlinInfor has released its Advisor family of decision-making modules that has been built upon its successful Infor CRM Epiphany Interaction Advisor software.

The marketers, with the help of the first module, Infor CRM Epiphany E-mail Advisor, are able to drive incremental revenue and improve customer retention and loyalty with dynamic, intelligent e-mails that leverage customer information and behavior patterns.

By determining which customer attributes are most predictive of offer acceptance and automatically adjusting targeting for all successive e-mails, including successive openings of the same e-mail accordingly, E-mail Advisor has reached at the forefront of e-mail marketing.

http://www.tmcnet.com/channels/online-crm/articles/94489-crm-week-review-crm-cloud-computing-set-significant.htm