As Hackers Increasingly Target The Cloud, Rackspace Turns To Military Vet With Cyberwar Experience

Grazed from International Business Times. Author: David Gilbert.

In the dead of night, two Navy SEALs and a veteran military officer glide toward a U.S. military facility, water lapping quietly against the side of their canoe. Suddenly two navy boats gun their motors as they pass the trio, but they fail to spot the group attempting to break into the secure facility. This is the kind of operation Brian Kelly used to handle in special ops for the U.S. government, to identify gaps in security — in fact, no one spotted him that night, and he was able to penetrate the facility, resulting in the firing of an soldier found asleep on the job.

Today, as chief security officer for cloud computing company Rackspace, the former Air Force lieutenant and then military consultant is using his stealth and smarts to protect the data of the firm’s 300,000 customers. And he’s facing unprecedented attacks on an entirely new battlefront: the cloud…

A recent report says 87 percent of organizations are making use of cloud infrastructure while research firm IDC is predicting cloud infrastructure spending will rise to more than $33 billion in 2015, accounting for a third of all information technology spending. As evidenced by the Dell-EMC megamerger this week, the future of computing is in the cloud, and everyone knows it — especially the hackers…

Read more from the source @ http://www.ibtimes.com/hackers-increasingly-target-cloud-rackspace-turns-military-vet-cyberwar-experience-2139057