August 21, 2012 at 7:26 am
EdVassie (8/21/2012)
A lot of people seem to be writing as though 'the cloud' is some homogenous entity that exists somewhere just this side of the horizon. This makes it easy to say 'the cloud' is not secure or not performant or not anything else that might benefit your organisation.In reality there are specific service offerings from a number of vendors, each of which has its own security, performance, stability and cost profile. Maybe it is time to stop being 1890 horse riders happily listing all the faults in these new-fangled automobiles and start looking at the merits the specific models have got.
There's actually a good book on that subject: http://future-hype.com/
I have looked at the merits of the various models, and the law that convenience and security are converse to each other, which applies universally to everything in all of human experience, applies to them too.
The whole point of "the cloud", whether we're talking about Amazon cloud computing, or simply paying Rackspace to host dedicated servers for you, or working with a multi-vendor SaaS solution, or anything else, is that it's more convenient to use. More available, from more locations, and less personal responsibility for admin/upkeep/maintenance. Thus, it is inherently less secure than something built for security.
There are reasons that hyper-sensitive data is kept on isolated machines in rooms with guards and all that. And, unlike in the Hollywood version, those isolated machines do not have USB ports or CD-R/W drives on them.
When the State Department and military services decided it needed to be more convenient to get at their data, they got WikiLeaks, because convenience-of-access is inversely proportional to security.
HOWEVER, and this is the big point to consider, how secure do you systems and data need to be? If what you're doing is aggregating tweets from twits, and Facebook updates, or something like that, security shouldn't be a primary consideration. Convenience should trump it resoundingly.
But there needs to be an informed decision made on the ballance.
Matt Honan used the Apple version of "the cloud" for its convenience, and paid the price. He should have known better, and says so himself in his articles on the subject. Read what he wrote about it, if you haven't already. It's definitely in the "if you haven't read this, you don't know what you're getting yourself in for in 'the cloud', even if you're an IT pro" category.
- Gus "GSquared", RSVP, OODA, MAP, NMVP, FAQ, SAT, SQL, DNA, RNA, UOI, IOU, AM, PM, AD, BC, BCE, USA, UN, CF, ROFL, LOL, ETC
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August 21, 2012 at 8:30 am
cdonlan 18448 (8/20/2012)
David.Poole (8/20/2012)Chances are the system that does your salary cheque is in the "cloud" and has been for donkey's years. It just existed before the name "cloud" was invented. Anyone remember EDI...Jeez, anyone born in green screen?
Yes, I remember the green screen. I'm thinking more along the lines of high-volume OLTP systems. Maybe I'm wrong but I don't think of payroll systems in the same way as claims payment or market trading systems. At least not in terms of frequency and volume. If it helps you scale then I think that's great, but I think it's going to be more the exception then the rule for that class of systems.
It appears you're thinking of just your systems. By count, many more systems could work in the cloud than couldn't. Whether they will is something else.
I can guarantee that some systems that shouldn't be in the cloud will get moved there, and I'll guarantee that some that should move for $$$ reasons, won't.
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August 21, 2012 at 8:46 am
GSquared (8/21/2012)
Matt Honan used the Apple version of "the cloud" for its convenience, and paid the price. He should have known better, and says so himself in his articles on the subject. Read what he wrote about it, if you haven't already. It's definitely in the "if you haven't read this, you don't know what you're getting yourself in for in 'the cloud', even if you're an IT pro" category.
For sure. Writing about this for tomorrow, but you need to understand your risks and take steps to mitigate them, perhaps with better backups.
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August 21, 2012 at 9:04 am
Steve Jones - SSC Editor (8/21/2012)
GSquared (8/21/2012)
Matt Honan used the Apple version of "the cloud" for its convenience, and paid the price. He should have known better, and says so himself in his articles on the subject. Read what he wrote about it, if you haven't already. It's definitely in the "if you haven't read this, you don't know what you're getting yourself in for in 'the cloud', even if you're an IT pro" category.For sure. Writing about this for tomorrow, but you need to understand your risks and take steps to mitigate them, perhaps with better backups.
Better backups are the way to cure a lot of problems, but prevention vs cure still needs to be part of the decision on clouding things or not.
- Gus "GSquared", RSVP, OODA, MAP, NMVP, FAQ, SAT, SQL, DNA, RNA, UOI, IOU, AM, PM, AD, BC, BCE, USA, UN, CF, ROFL, LOL, ETC
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August 22, 2012 at 9:52 am
Yes, we will be more cloud oriented next year and in the years to come. But we will not be using the cloud for any business sensitive data. As a government organization we have more data that needs to publicized then data that needs to be secured. As a result we have goal of getting the public data to the public in a usable and manageable way.
We have identified certain classed of data and have categorized our data as such. All data in the public class may be a candidate for the cloud. All the data that is protected is not.
So yes our cloud presence will grow, but with care and concerns about securing that which should be secure.
M.
Not all gray hairs are Dinosaurs!
August 24, 2012 at 8:08 am
Miles Neale (8/22/2012)
Yes, we will be more cloud oriented next year and in the years to come. But we will not be using the cloud for any business sensitive data. As a government organization we have more data that needs to publicized then data that needs to be secured. As a result we have goal of getting the public data to the public in a usable and manageable way.We have identified certain classed of data and have categorized our data as such. All data in the public class may be a candidate for the cloud. All the data that is protected is not.
So yes our cloud presence will grow, but with care and concerns about securing that which should be secure.
M.
Sounds like you're doing it right.
- Gus "GSquared", RSVP, OODA, MAP, NMVP, FAQ, SAT, SQL, DNA, RNA, UOI, IOU, AM, PM, AD, BC, BCE, USA, UN, CF, ROFL, LOL, ETC
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