Grazed from CloudTweaks. Author: Walter Bailey.

Cloud computing uptake by businesses has shifted the general model of organizational information complexes. Business enterprises have a lot of data to store and use. Even as they shift to the cloud, there are major dangers around security. In most cases, breaches to cloud-stored files happen because of insider conspiracy, malpractice, and malice. This article looks at four common insider threats to cloud computing and ways for organizations to avoid them. All this is intended at making the cloud shift worthwhile for businesses.

Malicious administrators

Cloud computing as a process is governed, managed, and maintained by site administrators. By default, they hold the key to managing all the data, files, and privileged company resources and files. Sometimes, relationships with employers don’t work. As a revenge, or for other reasons, administrators may end up spreading, or allowing privileged information to leak at the expense of the business enterprise involved…

Grazed from UCS. Author: Editorial Staff.

Cisco Systems Inc. is enhancing its cloud channel program with the aim of helping solution providers capitalize. Cisco is looking at two sides of the cloud computing market: public cloud services that partners offer to end user customers and service provider and on-premises private clouds to which solution providers sell hardware. When these two cloud models are combined, Cisco believes that it will present a $25 billion market opportunity.

Support and resources are offered to qualified solution providers by Cloud Builder Specialization to differentiate themselves to the sales of Cisco. Through hardware sales, it is suggested that these solution providers will excel in building and supporting what is traditionally private cloud infrastructure. By offering more support in developing and certifying systems, sales and marketing support to these partners, Cisco aims to widen the margins and rebates through the VIP program…

Grazed from ExtremeTech. Author: Joel Hruska.

The cloud is everywhere these days. Like its real-life namesakes, the concept and implementation of cloud computing is vague, fluffy, and hard to define. Larry Ellison had a point when he declared that cloud computing has been redefined “to include everything that we already do… It’s complete gibberish.”

If the definition of cloud computing is vague, the need to protect the rights of people who use cloud computing services is clear and pressing. We’ve compiled a list of five basic freedoms that are essential if the rights of the individual are to be protected against individual hackers as well as competing government and commercial interests. Each of these rights/freedoms is tied to real-world events that have threatened it…

Grazed from The Wall Street Journal. Author: Steve D. Jones.

After once dismissing cloud computing as “gibberish,” Oracle Corp. ORCL +0.64%Chief Executive Larry Ellison announced three new features for its cloud service at a customer conference in San Francisco.

Oracle will add infrastructure as a service to the Oracle Public Cloud, putting the enterprise software company in competition with pioneers Amazon.com Inc. AMZN -0.63% and Google Inc. GOOG +0.59% The Redwood Shores-based company also announced it will begin building and operating cloud services inside client data centers and a new version of its Exadata database machine with built in memory so it won’t have to rely on external storage…

Grazed from CloudTweaks. Author: John Omwamba.

The cloud is expanding everyday and no longer looks like the shapeless puffy fleece that was until recently. The post-millennium years have seen cloud computing tighten to the bursting point since many entrepreneurs have been trying to rent space on their own. There are many ways to approach the topic but the easiest is Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)—the network in layman’s language. Everything that happens on the web has to pass through the many channels going to and fro the data centers.

This is why when approaching security in cloud computing, one has to begin at the IaaS platform. Unlike other services, like SaaS, the user has no frustrating role to play here. Everything happens courtesy of the hosting platform that takes care of all safety concerns. This is because the center has machines that hold intact the data from various webmasters and intranets in order to keep the business running. The problem with this service is associating it exclusively with running a data center. In reality, this is only the starting phase of securing the platform. There are many other ways that hosting networks can do to improve the cloud…

Grazed from BusinessCloud9. Author: Stuart Lauchlan.

Last week’s formal announcement of the European Commission’s Cloud Computing strategy confirmed one thing: the Eurocrats in Brussels are leaning towards ‘a European Cloud’ in a big way and intend to achieve it through a combination of legislation, unification and standardisation. That has two immediate implications as national European government strategies – described by the Commission as not enough to achieve full potential of the Cloud – work out where they sit in this new push, while non-EU providers and governments, most notably in the US, must decide whether Brussels actions will lead to more open or more closed markets.

So what has the reaction been on both sides of the Pond to the forthcoming European Cloud? “The Cloud Industry Forum is keen to support positive credible action that encourages the adoption of Cloud Services and in that spirit the notion of aligning European member activity under a common ‘framework’ is sensible if it covers the truly practical issues that can impact adoption,” comments Andy Burton, chair of the CIF…

Grazed from Resource Nation. Author: Jessica Sanders.

As a small business owner, there is no question that cloud computing offers a variety of features that not only make the business run smoother, but make your life easier. While, first and foremost, it allows you to be more mobile, it also provides more extensive access for businesses who have many users for one program and is often more cost effective.

However, that doesn’t mean each and every program you run should be on the cloud – though it’s not unheard of; there are a few select programs that, when available in the cloud, can truly be used to their full potential…

Grazed from Wired. Author: Klint Finley.

Sacha Labourey wasn’t interested in cloud computing when he resigned as co-general manager of the JBoss division at open source software giant Red Hat in 2009. “I didn’t think it was anything special,” he says. “I thought cloud was just a bunch of servers running in a data center somewhere.” But within a year, he had a complete change of heart — so much so that he co-founded CloudBees, a cloud service for building Java applications.

“I wanted to help developers, and eventually, I realized the best way to do that to take the complexity out of fitting all the little pieces of the development stack together,” he says. He realized that cloud computing could be more than just a bunch of servers. It could be a way of making life easier for developers…

Grazed from ZDNet. Author: Larry Dignan.

The healthcare industry hasn’t been a big fan of cloud computing. In fact, even co-located and hosted data centers are a stretch due to security and privacy regulations. Verizon, however, aims to change that equation and just might succeed. Verizon’s enterprise unit, bolstered by its Terremark cloud computing portfolio, on Monday launched a portfolio of services designed to meet HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act) requirements.

In a nutshell, health care players—payers, insurers and hospitals—will be able to host patient information in Verizon’s Terremark data centers. Verizon also plans to offer co-location, managed hosting, cloud and private cloud services. Verizon’s enterprise cloud services plan starts with healthcare, but can scale to other industries. How will Verizon court healthcare? HIPAA requirements and various providers in the industry are held together by something called a business associate agreement (BAA). The BAA dictates that each party that touches patient data is required to meet HIPAA standards. If one party in the data chain fumbles it is liable for penalties and fines…

Grazed from AMEInfo. Author:  Editorial Staff.

Citrix will be showcasing network and cloud computing solutions that equip organisations to support the growing trend towards mobile workstyles in the region. With global research showing that corporate employees are increasingly relying on multiple computing devices to access corporate apps, data and services from a range of locations outside of the traditional office setup, Citrix’s technology showcase is set to show how businesses can meet the resulting challenges of security, access and management today and into the future. Mobile workstyles are shown to have been adopted today by a quarter (24%) of organizations worldwide, a figure expected to reach 83% by 2014. In line with this trend, many organisations in the Middle East are also exploring the efficiencies and benefits this can bring to the company and its staff.

Citrix will display its flagship product range designed to support mobile workstyles on its stand (CLD 16 in Hall number 6), including Citrix XenDesktop for centralized virtual desktop delivery as a service, Citrix Receiver and Citrix CloudGateway , an enterprise mobility management solution that securely delivers mobile, Intranet, Web, SaaS and Windows apps and data to any device, anywhere. Also at the Citrix stand, a networking and cloud solutions demonstration will feature NetScaler, the most advanced cloud network platform deployed in thousands of networks around the globe to optimize, secure and control the delivery of all enterprise and cloud services…