I just listened to an excellent webcast by Neil MacDonald at Gartner on “Why Cloud-Based Computing Will Be More Secure Than It Is Today”.  Gartner says that security concerns seem to be top of mind in different surveys on the adoption of cloud computing.  Security is important, but people are focusing on the wrong thing.

Many organizations focus on securing or locking down devices.  IT locks down servers, firewalls, desktops, mobile devices, you name it.  That is a part of the solution, but what is really most important?  It’s controlling the outcome of a process, and that is typically about the information.

MacDonald gives a great example of how organizations already give their most important data to 3rd party providers.  Think about payroll.  Most companies outsource this process.  Talk about sensitive data.  Somehow we trust those organizations with the security of our personnel information.

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Everyone uses online services to buy things, communicate, work, share information and keep in touch friends and family.  We all need to log into a website or service before we get access and that means using a password.  We all love passwords because they’re easy to use, but we hate them because we have to remember them.

The experts tell us to create something that’s not easy to guess, but it needs to be something you won’t forget either – don’t use “password” as your password.  The best thing is to create something you can easily remember, but add a few upper case letters and symbols into it.  That makes it harder to guess and harder for a hacker to find using a brute force attack.

Here are some examples.

• Rather than using “spaghetti”, use “$p@ghe!!I”. 
• Instead of “pistachio”, use P1st@chio”.
• Don’t use “American Airlines”, use “aM3r1CanA!rl1nes”. 

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The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has published some new documents on cloud computing to provide guidance to the US government on how to use the cloud.  These standards are important as cloud computing matures and for anyone wishing to provide the US government with cloud solutions.

NIST is helping to drive the secure adoption of cloud computing in the US government by collaborating with standards bodies, the private sector, academia, and other federal agencies to develop standards and guidelines.  They are outlined in the NIST Cloud Computing Standards Roadmap.  NIST’s goal is to develop a vendor-neutral architecture without defining a prescribed technical solution.  In other words, create guidelines and let businesses and the federal agencies implement them in ways that meet the guidelines.

The NIST Cloud Computing Reference Architecture shows a role or actor-based system that defines all the users and providers.  It describes the central elements of cloud computing for federal CIOs, procurement officials and IT program managers as they look to create a common approach to moving to the cloud.  These are the five actors: Read the rest of this entry »

Leaking information is nothing new and in many cases some organizations do it as part of a strategy.  How many times have you heard the line “According to a high-level source …”  Sometimes organizations want to leak information to see the reaction before making a real decision.

Unfortunately when information leaks cause major problems, you need to clamp down on them before things get out of hand.  The leak could be benign, but it could be catastrophic.

In recent weeks and months, AT&T, Best Buy, Sprint and HP have suffered in varying degrees over leaked memos.

AT&T is currently trying to purchase T-Mobile for $39 billion.  AT&T said that this acquisition would create jobs and provide much needed infrastructure improvements so that customers would get better service.  They claim that T-Mobile needs to increase coverage of its LTE network and that would improve cellular services.  They claim the deal is a win-win for everyone.

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Here is another great video explaining cloud computing.  Lots of people are still confused with all the terminology thrown around, so I thought that with Dreamforce and VMWorld 2011 this week, it was a good time to help explain the cloud in simple terms.  Both of these conferences bring together luminaries, dignitaries and companys (couldn’t think of another aries word) from all over the tech world.

I bet if you ask 10 people for their definition of cloud computing you would get 11 different answers.  There are too many terms to shake a stick at and differing views on everything.

Most people can at least agree that the cloud has many benefits for consumers and businesses because it makes life easier.  Hopefully you will be a little less confused after watching the video.

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