Avoiding Unpleasant Cloud Surprises

Grazed from eCommerce Times. Author Ed Moyle.

For most technologists in the enterprise nowadays, cloud is a pretty big deal — and securing it can be an even bigger deal still. Security was the top concern of 46 percent of respondents to a recent survey by North Bridge Venture Partners (The Future of Cloud Computing). While this number is actually down from last year’s 55 percent, it does underscore the relative importance of security in these efforts.

This is a natural reaction. It is human nature for people to view as more risky what they cannot control directly, an arrangement many cloud efforts require. So despite some recent evidence that service provider environments might not be as problematic as folks have thought (i.e., data from Alert Logic demonstrating a lower threat diversity and lower incident occurrence rates in service provider environments), the fact of the matter is that the proposition is still pretty scary. Recent events like the revelation of the NSA PRISM program haven’t helped in this regard…

Because of this, one reaction from some technology decision makers is to adopt a "no cloud" posture — meaning they’ve attempted to prohibit, disallow or otherwise discourage cloud adoption within their enterprises. While this is an understandable reaction, it’s also one that — as a practical matter — merits some degree of caution. Why? Because the dynamics are such that adoption can sometimes continue, even when specifically disallowed by policy. This can make the situation much worse than it might otherwise be…

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