Grazed from Forbes.  Author: Joe McKendrick.

Two separate studies published this past week by Ponemon Institute reveal the holes in many organizations’ cloud security strategies, and even diminished security as cloud grows as a frenetic clip.  For starters, a study of 4,205 business and IT managers conducted by the Ponemon Institute and commissioned by Thales, an online security provider, finds an increasing number of organizations are transferring sensitive or confidential data to the cloud despite concerns over data protection. More than half of all respondents say their organization currently transfers sensitive or confidential data to the cloud – an increase of 10% compared with a comparable study conducted last year.

In the meantime, a separate survey of 798 IT and security professionals, conducted by Ponemon and underwritten by WatchDox, agrees that cloud computing is opening up a can of worms when it comes to sensitive data, and many organizations are not taking the necessary steps to protect this type of data on mobile devices and in the cloud. The survey finds 54 percent of respondents report they already have had, on average, five data breach incidents involving the loss or theft of a mobile device containing regulated data…

Grazed from TechTarget.  Author: Ben Cole.

When a business acquires a cloud service, its first line of risk defense is the cloud contract’s service-level agreement – and rightly so, as a strong cloud SLA will become increasingly vital to business operations in coming years.  Fifty-five percent of CIOs believe they will cloud source all of their critical applications and operations by 2020, according to a recent survey by Stamford, Conn.-based consultancy Gartner Inc. That will have major implications in many business areas, and force IT to manage the risks associated with cloud SLAs.

"The reason we want to buy into cloud computing is because its flexible, it’s scalable, it’s on demand, it’s less expensive," said Gartner Research vice president Jay Heiser at the Gartner Security and Risk Management Summit in National Harbor, Md., in June. "How is that provisioned? By having access to appropriate levels of processing and storage when they are needed and as available."…

Grazed from eBizQ.  Author: Michael Poulin.

In the 5th Cloud World Forum, that took place a couple days ago in London, I visited the Executive Forum sections. Corporate executives and senior management discussed different Cloud Computing related problems. Also, many came there not to share how to work with Cloud but looking for an answer to why to do it at all.

There was a noticeable shift in the focus of CIOs and Senior Managers in an area of major concerns regarding Cloud. Guess where this shift moves to from security… The concern #1 now is business compliance with both consumers’ internal policies and industry regulations. This is not a new wave however; I noticed this trend a year ago and even wrote a multi-point checklist to help consumers when contracting Cloud. It seems that now this non-technical problem of compliance has reached the surface and superseded technical issues in the eyes of decision makers…

Grazed from PRNewsWire.  Author: PR Announcement.

Wharfedale Technologies Inc. (WFT Cloud), a leading SAP Infrastructure and SAP Cloud consulting firm, has made significant gains within the cloud computing domain by focusing on cost savings and faster ROI for customers when they deploy or migrate SAP Applications to the Cloud.

Understanding the true cost-saving and benefits for customers moving SAP landscapes to Cloud, WFT releases the on-premise Cloud services to meet the rapid and evolving market demands.  Private Cloud at Customer Premise the following features:…

Grazed from eWeek.  Author: Gina Ross.

Adoption of cloud models is moving into a mature stage as more organizations expect to transition key IT operations to the cloud over the next five years, with private cloud deployments leading the way. Today, 61 percent of organizations have at least a portion of their computing infrastructure in the cloud, according to an IDG Enterprise cloud computing report.

Although many enterprises are still trying to identify IT operations that are good candidates for cloud hosting, cloud investments are up compared with last year, increasing by 10 percent for an average investment of $1.5 million, said IDG. Based on 1,358 survey respondents, a key finding shows that 29 percent of companies expect that the majority of IT operations—with the exception of financial and compliance applications—will be in the cloud in the next five years…

Grazed from TechTarget.  Author: Lynn Haber.

It may not be a land rush but larger profitable and growing MSPs are fodder for acquisition in today’s IT market as cloud computing becomes more integral to the way companies think about IT and the solution providers they do business with.  Evidence of this can be found at both All Covered, an IT services company and division of Konica Minolta Solutions US Inc., with more than two dozen locations nationwide, and the AJP Group LLC, a venture capital firm in Raleigh, N.C. In fact, All Covered has 30 acquisitions under its belt over just the last five years.

"Acquisition allows us to accelerate our growth, to bring in technology capabilities we didn’t have prior to the acquisition as well as vertical industry expertise," said Bruce Teichman, director of corporate development at All Covered. To attain a similar level of growth organically would take 20 years, he added. "Buy it and it’s immediate."…

Grazed from InformationWeek.  Author: Kelly Sheridan.

Microsoft announced that it will be offering free weekly updates for Windows 8 users later this year. Its new plan, announced this week at its Build conference, will help Microsoft remain competitive in the rapidly changing tech industry, in which most companies already offer updates on a weekly to daily basis.

For decades, Microsoft has released new versions of its Office software about once every three years — too slow for today’s consumers. In a statement to Bloomberg, IDC analyst Marissa Webster said, "Microsoft, on this every-three-year schedule for the massive wave of new products, looks like a dinosaur. Three years is a lifetime in tech these days."…

Grazed from MarketWire.  Author: PR Announcement.

Huddle has received the award for ‘Supplier of the Year’ at Computer Weekly’s European User Awards for Enterprise Software. The awards ceremony took place at the 5th annual Cloud World Forum on 26 June after judges Bob Brown from Quocirca, George Lawrie of Forrester Research and Spencer Izard from IDC Research pitted the entries against the tough award criteria. Huddle fought off fierce competition to be crowned the winner.

Since it was founded in 2006, Huddle has grown to around 200 people, with offices in London, San Francisco and New York. It was co-founded by Alastair Mitchell and Andy McLoughlin when they became frustrated with the existing enterprise technology’s inability to help people work together. Through their leadership, Huddle has raised in excess of $40 million in funding and is now used by more than 100,000 businesses worldwide…

Grazed from MarketWire.  Author: PR Announcement.

The Cloud Security Alliance (CSA) today announced the formation of the Incident Management and Forensics Working Group, a new CSA Working Group that will focus on the examination of incident handling and forensics in cloud environments.

To better understand the state of the cloud forensics industry, the Incident Management and Forensics Working Group conducted an assessment of current issues and published its findings in the Working Group’s first white paper, entitled: "Mapping the Forensic Standard ISO/IEC 27037 to Cloud Computing."…

Grazed from Xtium.  Author: Shawn Fichter.

Stress, hassle, time. These are all words typically associated with disaster recovery tests. In the past 15 years I’ve spent working in the business continuity space, I’ve seen DR tests be a burden. However if done correctly and properly documented, they don’t have to be. So what do you need to do to ensure you’re prepared for the inevitable? Here are the common questions I’ve heard from customers about DR tests over the years.

What is a disaster recovery test?

A DR test is a process to evaluate the procedures that an organization has in place for ensuring business continuity in the event of a major service interruption or catastrophic event. Tests allow service providers and their customers to ensure the integrity of protected data as well as execute and refine processes for making that data available in the event of a declared disaster…