The Unthinkable Risks of the Cloud

Grazed from CFO. Author: David Wood.

By mid-2013 – meaning now — cloud computing will be in use by about 80 percent of about 600 companies with at least 500 employees each, according to a 2012 TNS Infratest survey. The trend is undeniable: Data management and storage are moving offsite to cloud computing vendors on a vast scale.

Touting cloud computing as a way to eliminate the costs of buying and maintaining on-site information-technology assets, vendors offer it in the form of software as a service (SAAS), a distribution model in which software applications are delivered to clients over a web-based network…

Offered in comprehensive, fully-integrated form, SAAS can serve the needs of entire companies through huge, web-based platforms. As cloud computing rapidly becomes the delivery channel for software developers of all shapes and sizes to get their products to market, offering applications in a cloud is now the rule, not the exception…

Read more from the source @ http://www3.cfo.com/article/2013/8/risk-management_anderson-kill-cloud-computing-cyber-risk-microsoft-google-amazon-rackspace-salesforce