Cloud Security Is More Important Than Ever

Grazed from Sys Con Media. Author: Gilad Parann-Nissany.

The cloud computing industry is currently experiencing tremendous growth. Studies predict that by 2014, 60% of server workload will be virtualized and the total size of the industry will be $150 billion (up from $48 billion in 2008). Alongside this growth, cloud computing has also seen an increase in criminal activities in the cloud.

Cloud computing faces many of the same threats as the physical workplace. Attackers use tactics such like social engineering or working from the inside. They take advantage of employees’ use of social media and downloading of applications on company computers to send attacks over the web. They continue to take advantage of email with increasingly sophisticated viruses that bypass anti-virus tools. Hackers focus on targeting specific organizations with valuable data – attacking in a planned and professional way. All of these threats affect the cloud, the data center, and personal devices…

Meanwhile, the cloud also has threats all its own. The presence of massive amounts of valuable data, from multiple people and multiple organizations, in a single cloud infrastructure, creates an attractive target. This is not just a theory. The recent NSA/PRISM scandal is a very public example of how juicy a target the cloud has become. By placing control of your data in the hands of your cloud provider, anyone who breaks into that cloud can trawl your data along with everyone else’s. Criminals are keen to exploit the cloud…

Read more from the source @ http://www.sys-con.com/node/2874209