Ask Slashdot: Is Your Data Safe In the Cloud?
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With so much personal data being kept on the cloud, including government and health records or your source code, do you have any concerns about it falling into the wrong hands? Do you think the cloud's benefits are outweighed by continuing security issues?
Government action (Score:5, Informative)
I believe that government seizure/examination of cloud data is even a bigger threat than hacking. With a court order or -- as we have seen in the past few years -- even without a court order, a trustworthy cloud operator could be forced to turn over our data. The article a few days ago about foreign governments being reluctant to sign onto cloud computing with an American company because of the potential for snooping into their data illustrates the point even further.
Re:Government action (Score:5, Insightful)
Heck, never mind seizure, how about willfully providing this information? Twitter is now providing all public posts to the government.
Bottom line, if it's in a cloud, you have zero guarantee as to how that information will be used and who will end up with access to it.
Re:Government action (Score:5, Insightful)
Twitter is now providing all public posts to the government.
I've never used Twitter, so maybe I'm missing something.
Isn't Twitter providing all public posts to the whole world?
Re:Government action (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Government action (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Government action (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Government action (Score:4, Insightful)
Not true (except maybe in the US, where copyright law seems to only apply in favour of corporations, and the sheeple have ceded control of the political process to lobbyists because the rednecks fear limitations on political campaign donations and pork to the point where privacy legislation is decades behind the rest of the world).
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Actually you are very much on mark there. An article in Politico over the weekend talked about how the Patriot Act is a deterrent for companies to use cloud storage in the U.S.
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1111/69366.html
Re:Government action (Score:5, Interesting)
Yes, to me this is a much bigger concern than something intrinsically secure/insecure about cloud computing. By entrusting my data to a third party vendor, I make it one step easier for the government to sieze it. With the kinds of legislation that's being debated even this week, I worry that any data I entrust to a vendor might eventually be subpoenaed, and I wouldn't have any recourse.
And hosting that data elsewhere (ie, outside of my country) doesn't necessarily solve anything.
On the other hand, the benefits of the cloud - a scalability that I can never achieve "at home" - enormously outweigh this concern in most cases. When it comes to confidential data, however, the question becomes much less obvious.
Re:Government action (Score:5, Interesting)
"Becomes less obvious"
No it doesn't. Well, not to me. I just encrypt my data and store it in .JPG, .TGA, .PNG image's exif or "developer's area" data, then upload it to Sourceforge, GitHub, PirateBay, etc. and share it with the whole world. Since the images can't be transcoded in my open source projects (or else SHA-1 hashes don't match in the repositories), the data is pristine, verifiability tamper proof, and everywhere for me to re-download, decrypt, and use (so long as my projects remain popular).
I didn't see anything prohibiting this practice in the EULA... Still, I thought it best if the data was actually used for something. Turns out encrypted data makes a really good and fast pseudo random number generator lookup table, although it does eat a bit of disk space.
Now, if you want to narrow your definition of "cloud" to only services that do re-encode and compress my data, not allowing encryption or lossless images -- Well, I'd argue that those aren't storage solutions so much as storage problems.
Lately I've been hosting my data with friends and family, and they host theirs with me. Altogether we've got quite a bit of redundancy and geographic coverage. While I may not be able to get as reliable a service "at home", at all of our homes, I've achieved even higher uptime over the past year than Sourceforge.org has had... My custom solution involving deduplication (hey, we're family we can ACTUALLY trust each-other with some things) and other FSYNC like features is not ready for prime-time yet, but when it is, I plan to TAKE BACK THE CLOUD -- For free.
Re:Government action (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3)
The problem is a court order does not specify that one client's data is in scope and another is out. Usually it would be a seizure of all computers so they can find the records they want.
Hosting companies have had their entire racks seized, putting all of their customers out of service just so they can find 1 user/client who is causing problems (usually copyright MAFIAA raids). Offsite backups and service restoration aside, the feds have your data and you aren't even the target of the warrant. A bit of s
Re:Government action (Score:4, Interesting)
So your data isn't really that much safer out of the cloud from the government.
The fear of the cloud is like the fear of taking the train vs. driving.
Like taking a train if there is an accident, one accident could have a big effect and a lot of people get hurt. While people are getting hurt every day (more then then a single train accident)
You are usually safer in the Cloud computing or taking the Train... However you loose control so you need to trust someone else with your data or your life. We don't like doing that even if they are better at keeping you safe then you are.
We as IT folk who take pride in our work really don't like the idea that some snot noes kid is handling data. However for the most part we are the Snot Noes Kids too, and we are in an organization who isn't as committed to keeping everything protected and operational.
Re: (Score:3)
ABSOLUTELY !! (Score:4, Funny)
And what's a cloud, really?
Re: (Score:3)
And what's a cloud, really?
haha, good luck with that. I think it is this this undefined blob formed by interacting with many transfer points that has many shapes and sizes which has stuff flows out off... like water... oh wait, that's the old definition... or maybe not if you just replace the word water with the word data I guess
a ff7 character? (Score:5, Funny)
It's a marketing term for a hard drive in a different building from the one you are currently in.
Re:a ff7 character? (Score:5, Funny)
A whole server full of hard drives in a different building!
Slashdot: building consensus.
Re:ABSOLUTELY !! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:ABSOLUTELY !! (Score:5, Informative)
Re:ABSOLUTELY !! (Score:4, Informative)
"Cloud" refers to a symbol used in network organization charts and data flow diagrams to refer to a connection across a large network. Something being "in the cloud" is on the other side of this symbol, namely on leased servers in someone else's data center.
In other words, it's what we used to call 'the black box'. Once data enters the black box, it shouldn't matter to the app.
Re: (Score:3)
True, this describes common usage, but this is not how it should be. Cloud *should* be commodity, highly scalable rented compute time/space/whatever. Some marketing nitwit co-opted the term "cloud" and used it as a synonym for "internet". As a result, that old ftp server we had 30 years ago is now "cloud computing".
I don't deny that "cloud == internet" is what people mean these days. I deny that it's useful in any way other than as marketing nonsense.
Re:ABSOLUTELY !! (Score:5, Funny)
Cloud ::= Timesharing (Score:5, Interesting)
We used to have cloud computing in the mainframe days: IBM ran a data center somewhere, and you connected to it via a leased line. The only way you knew its location was from the size of your phone bill (;-))
Joking aside, cloud computing really is just a buzzword change. Like any other outsourcing effort, you are at the mercy of the vendor and the government of the country they're in. Chose your suppliers based on the SLA they'll offer you, and the country of the candidate suppliers based on the rights they honor.
--dave
Data safe? (Score:5, Funny)
not a bit
No. (Score:5, Insightful)
No one is going to care as much about your data as you do. Next question please.
Re:No. (Score:5, Insightful)
No one is going to care as much about your data as you do. Next question please.
This. My employer only backs up one of several disk partitions on my work computer. The non-backed up partitions were hosed during a routine system upgrade last summer. Fortunately, I had backed up the data using my own resources but others hadn't and lost months of work.
The lesson: only you can ensure the integrity and persistence of your data. If even your employer can't, then who can?
Re:No. (Score:5, Insightful)
And frankly, if your employer allows you to create your own data partitions on your hard drive, and doesn't require you to sync or store data on a file server, then they deserve to lose their data.
Re: (Score:3)
Answer: you. USBs are large and cheap these days. As are other devices. Pick a backup method. Even Google docs as a backup is ok. Caring about data is part of being a professional. If you don't cover yourself you are failing in your duty.
Re:No. (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3)
That's another case for convenience trumping safety, but might I point out that bank runs [wikipedia.org] happen when people don't trust the bank anymore?
maybe more secure (Score:4, Insightful)
In many cases maybe your data is even more secure in a cloud than on your own servers, especially if you choose your 'cloud' carefully (outside of your country/jurisdiction).
The real threats to your data are your own employees and your government. The outside 'hackers' come as a very distant third.
Re:maybe more secure (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, exactly.
Servers "in the cloud" are installed, secured, and maintained, by sysadmins like you and me. Some of those sysadmins are good at what they do, and some of them aren't. "The cloud" is not intrinsically secure or insecure, because "the cloud" is not a definable entity, as much as the tech press wants it to be. This is a misnomer perpetrated by the poorly-informed press, and not really something that's based in reality.
Every time we read an article about "the cloud", it's useful to take a moment to consider what it actually means in that particular scenario.
Although "the cloud" means "I don't care where my servers are", there are in fact actual servers somewhere, and there's an actual person or team of persons responsible for maintaining that server or servers, and they are either good at their job, or they aren't. Talking about "the cloud" as though it's one homogeneous mush of data is nonsense, and leads to all sorts of false conclusions.
Re:maybe more secure (Score:5, Insightful)
Really, I just hate the term "The Cloud" in the first place. It's so vague as to be unusable. Virtualized servers? OK, I get that, and it's specific about what it means. But "on the cloud" tends to just mean "on the internet somehow". Maybe it's on a physical box, maybe it's virtualized, maybe it's run by your company (but probably not), maybe it's managed by a third party. It means I have to ask additional questions, meaning the term is a waste of time.
Re:maybe more secure (Score:5, Insightful)
I feel it's more about paying someone else to do all that server'y stuff, and gives you the freedom to go "I need $foo for $bar time" - and the provider(s) goes "okay" and magically pulls it out of the cloud for you. When you're done with it, it goes back to the cloud, no extra cost to you.
At least, that's the impression I've got from the non-technical people's understanding of it. For techies there's nothing new, per se. It's just that hardware / software have come to a point where large companies find it useful both to sell and to buy, and marketing have managed to find a way to explain it to non-techies.
Re:maybe more secure (Score:5, Informative)
NIST published SP800-145 [nist.gov] (PDF warning) in October with their definition of cloud computing:
There is an expanded section covering an additional 1.5 pages describing:
OK, so it's not the best-formatted list (I blame Slashdot), but it makes the point. The document is short and abstract, but it at least tries to give a coherent response.
I Disagree (Score:5, Insightful)
Servers "in the cloud" are installed, secured, and maintained, by sysadmins like you and me. Some of those sysadmins are good at what they do, and some of them aren't.
I don't get it then, what makes the sysadmins and employees at these companies that run "the cloud" any more or less secure than my own employees and sysadmins? And what makes the government where "the cloud" resides any more respectable of my privacy than my local government? My own reaction is that there's just another layer of security risk here. At least if they're my employees or sysadmins and I find out data is being leaked, I can fire them and do an internal investigation. If some sysadmin is dumping databases at a "cloud" site, then who is ever going to know and how is that ever going to be rectified?
I'm not arguing against "the cloud" and I don't have a good example on hand of where "the cloud" has failed but to me it seems like a lot of these are virtual machines sitting on physical hardware running more software. And every layer is just another potential weak point in the chain of software. Is that not true? Isn't it possible that employees of VM farms are simply cloning and dumping memory or hard disks (or entire VMs for that matter) for their own personal use?
There was a paper a while back about encrypted computing just to address this very fear.
"The cloud" is not intrinsically secure or insecure, because "the cloud" is not a definable entity, as much as the tech press wants it to be. This is a misnomer perpetrated by the poorly-informed press, and not really something that's based in reality.
Just like the title to this Ask Slashdot encourages us to debate the security of something that cannot be intrinsically secure or insecure? If you're telling me that "the cloud" is not intrinsically secure or insecure why are we having this conversation? I mean, I think it's worthwhile to consider what a lot of "the cloud" services are that are out there (the big few that exist) and to debate their security success or potential holes. You can always deflect my arguments by saying that they're just "implementing the cloud wrong" and we won't go anywhere. But it is my opinion that sensitive, personal and secure information should not be handed off to yet another third part for computation or storage unless your trust with them is enough to risk litigation against yourself from all of your customers.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
we are having this conversation to promote SourceForge, if you didn't notice.
heck, I would have missed this "article" but it was laced on my post history page - in a different color too.
I thought I had ads disabled. guess not...
Re: (Score:3)
I guess you missed the story yesterday, then. We were warned.
Re:We were warned. (About Sponsored) (Score:3)
I saw the story about Sponsored stuff, but the "loudness" shocked me a little.
At least you can Ad-Block the logos. (... for now!)
I'm kinda dreading the eventual push to have every story Sponsored though.
Re: (Score:2)
Not only is this dependent on the quality of the sysadmins, it is dependent as well on the policies and actions of those governing any particular cloud. The sysadmins do not create these policies, they merely implement them. Bottom line is that when you put data in a 'cloud', you are trusting the corporation or entity in control of that cloud with your data. Their policies could change at any time. Or the government could do so for them. Or another entity could take ownership and again change the policies i
Re: (Score:3)
let's say cloud provider security is brilliant and you place the cloud on the moon just so that no human can get there... CA hack and MITM can make efforts worthless within seconds
Re: (Score:2)
simple -- create an encrypted container (Score:2, Insightful)
then store it to the cloud w/ you just knowing the keys/passphrases
Re: (Score:2)
remember not to reuse the passwords you give to journalists writing books about you especially if the data is leaked in the wild :)
The "cloud" is not some mysterious relic. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3)
Someone re-re-invented mainframes, and therefore everything is new and no-one understands it any more.
Possibly better trained than me? (Score:4, Insightful)
I would like to believe that when I host a server at Slicehost (oh, yeah, it's Rackspace now) that they have server administrators who are better trained than I am. That they have backup procedures that are better executed than I would do. That they upgrade their hardware more often than I do.
Likewise, if I put my data on a "cloud" service, I am paying for the assurance that they have secured those servers at least as well as I would, in addition to whatever it is that they specialize in (scalability, availability, redundancy, etc). So, in theory at least, that's what's special about it - that they can do a better job at those things, for less money, than I can.
The reality can be less clear cut, and so, as with any vendor selection process, you have to do your homework and find the ones that seem to do a good job.
I think the press has done us all a disservice by making the cloud into, as you say, a mysterious relic with mystical powers. Hopefully those of us actually making these decisions understand what it really means and can be sober about evaluating options.
Re:Possibly better trained than me? (Score:5, Interesting)
The key phrases of your entire post are "I would like to believe..." "In theory..." "....seem to do a good job"
The reality of it...really...we, as sysadmins turning to "The Cloud", have no real bloody idea how good the people there are. And lets face it...there are rogue sysadmins everywhere (just like rogue accountants, etc). Sure, its a serious minority of people, but they exist.
If I have a rogue sysadmin at my office, my data is in danger (whether by accidential/intentional destruction, leaks, theft, etc). At aq major cloud provider, hundreds, if not thousands of company's data is at risk.
There are definite cases for The Cloud...I have my antispam services in the cloud for example. The economy of scale meant that they could do a better job for the same price as I could internally. If you are a retailer with an e-comm presence, having the ability to instantly scale up your processing power based on need at a given moment (ie..Black Friday/Cyber Monday) without having to buy hundreds of thousands of dollars of equipment that is rarely used is a good thing.
But throwing my day-to-day operations and database to the cloud? I have no need, and I can provide the services to my company far cheaper than any external provider. Last time I priced it out, I could entirely re-do my entire computer infrastructure (Servers, desktops, switches, routers,etc) every 2 years for the extra cost of having it hosted for me. I'd be a fucking retard to do that.
hosting company’s gets the wrong server (Score:5, Informative)
Now this story shows that the hosting company's can get mix up and do you want to take that risk with your data??
http://thedailywtf.com/Articles/Remotely-Incompetent.aspx [thedailywtf.com]
A little telling (Score:2)
...that the first outing of the sponsored Ask Slashdot is a Geeknet company.
In any case, as usual, it depends on the kind of data. I believe medical data has be encrypted though, no?
Re:A little telling (Score:5, Funny)
...that the first outing of the sponsored Ask Slashdot is a Geeknet company.
Yes. I'm called the guinea pig.
Re: (Score:3)
Looking good so far. It'll be interesting to see what kind of posts actual sponsors make when we get there.
Re:A little telling (Score:5, Interesting)
Well, we were pissed about the experts not being expert enough -- so here goes nothing -
What does Source Forge do that is above and beyond the call of duty to protect user information? Have you guys had any data breaches that you haven't disclosed, or fully disclosed? What would you have done differently in hindsight?
Re:A little telling (Score:5, Informative)
What does Source Forge do that is above and beyond the call of duty to protect user information? Have you guys had any data breaches that you haven't disclosed, or fully disclosed? What would you have done differently in hindsight?
When we have attacks, and compromises (which has happened in the the past) we report in detail on it in the blog. Here's one example: https://sourceforge.net/blog/update-sourceforgenet-attack/ [sourceforge.net]
As with any company, these sorts of things have a procedure that we have to follow, and I'm checking with the people along that trail to see what I should say in response. There haven't been any compromises or attacks during my time at SF, so I don't have any personal experience as to how we respond to this, but I've asked some of the guys on our engineering team to help me put together a response to this question.
Re:A little telling (Score:4, Informative)
Here's a little more information from our legal folks:
A: Earlier this year, we went through a pretty robust process to receive our Truste certification which covers privacy, security and safe harbor (our privacy policy is located at ADD LINK). We are continuing to look for ways to improve our security controls and protect user personal information. We did fully disclose an incident early in 2001 and the details and what we did about can be found at: http://sourceforge.net/blog/sourceforge-attack-full-report/ [sourceforge.net]
They also recommended that I point you to our corporate privacy policy, here: http://geek.net/privacy-statement [geek.net]
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
(our privacy policy is located at ADD LINK).
I think you forgot something, like making the effort to read the marketing material someone handed you before you copied and pasted it.
Re:A little telling (Score:4, Funny)
Excellent,
I was told by a very powerful source that the only way to protect my data was via a contract for my soul. Among the things needed for the incantation a guinea pig was cited.
Look at Paragraph 367 Subsection 32... "Satan will personally hover over your data with an army of undead ghouls.^3214"
I'm still trying to find foot note three thousand two hundred fourteen.
These deals with the devil are almost as bad as FCC mandates.
Re:A little telling (Score:5, Funny)
Not to tell y'all how to run your campaigns, but as a humble suggestion, wouldn't it increase your legitimacy if you paid some nice money to someone with a low UID, say 3 digits or less, to help out?
Re:A little telling (Score:5, Funny)
What would you prefer?
Ask Slashdot: Is Google Evil? Sponsored by Microsoft
Ask Slashdot: Is The Kindle Fire Better Than iPad? Sponsored by Amazon
Ask Slashdot: Why Do Charletans Believe The Global Warming Myth? Sponsored by The Republican Party
Ask Slashdot: Is Your Data Safe In Anuses? Sponsored by Goatse
Ask Slashdot: Do You Want To Hear A Personal Message? Sponsored by Jimmy Wales
No, the bits will get wet! (Score:5, Insightful)
::rimshot::
No, seriously - depending on the cloud service, aren't buckets of data encrypted in such a way that only the owner of the data can access them? Cloud service providers may be required to hand over data, but do they have the means of handing over the encryption keys along with it?
For certain cloud services where you're uploading via browser, they may be encrypting your data post-upload, so the request to decrypt may be more trivial. However, if you manage your own (like S3 backups) - or simply use a service that encrypts BEFORE uploading, I'm not sure there's a whole lot Amazon or some other provider could do to hand over the data in any usable form.
Those who are concerned about security of their data should ensure that the backup is encrypted in an acceptable method, or simply stash it in an encrypted container before storing it "online" (I realize there may be limitations of scale with that suggestion).
Re: (Score:2)
Cloud service providers may be required to hand over data, but do they have the means of handing over the encryption keys along with it?
Well, it depends on what you mean by "cloud," but...
http://digital-lifestyles.info/2007/11/09/hushmail-opens-emails-to-us-dea/ [digital-lifestyles.info]
Who asked this question? (Score:5, Insightful)
Unlike all other Ask Slashdots, this question is not prededed by "$USERNAME writes", so who actually proposed this question? A user that didn't get credit? A Slashdot editor? Someone from Sourceforge? The post introducing sponsored Ask Slashdots says that "the sponsors don't pick the questions", but that's still ambiguous. Many people are skeptical about this being thinly veiled astroturfing, so it's important to be as transparent as possible.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Who asked this question? (Score:5, Informative)
I didn't get to pick the question, if that's what you're asking. Presumably, if I had, it would be more about Open Source. I believe the question was chosen by the Slashdot editorial team.
Re:Who asked this question? (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't know if they're taking constructive criticism from anonymous users, but...
Slashdot might get more mileage out of a question that people can have several different takes on. "How should I archive data long term?", or "How do you secure a small business website on a tight budget?", or the like. This one is a bit of a dud because it's basically two yes/no answers. It's just chumming the waters to throw something like this into a user community that's already on to your synergistic marketing plan; they need something that geeks can't help themselves but participate in.
For a SourceForge topic, I'd love to read more details about what's involved in providing and effectively securing the type of service they provide (which must be a bit of a rolling nightmare for you folks with hundreds of thousands of projects and the level of exposure that entails), and maybe a solicitation of anonymously-submitted stories from other users about website break-ins they've had to clean up and how things went, both with the software and with public relations.
Re:Who asked this question? (Score:5, Informative)
For what its worth, I personally agree with you.
Re: (Score:3)
Please not "how do i archive data long term?" That comes up several times a year.
Re: (Score:2)
My question is why can't I exclude stories by category now? I went to block Ask Slashdot from my list of stories I'll accept and it just plain didn't work.
Re:Who asked this question? (Score:5, Informative)
That would be a bug, not a conspiracy. I'll see to it gets fixed.
Re:Who asked this question? (Score:5, Insightful)
Hey, PerlJedi,
Just thought I'd throw out that I'm happy to see your interaction here. It's always bugged me how little the /. staff is represented in the comments.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Find out...right after this message from our sponsors!
Re: (Score:3)
We wrote the question after being told that cloud security was the topic to be covered. When the editors write a story there isn't a "username writes" at the beginning. Here are a couple of examples from yesterday [slashdot.org] and Tuesday [slashdot.org].
Re: (Score:3)
We wrote the question after being told that cloud security was the topic to be covered.
Thanks samszenpus. Just for clarification: Who is the "we" who wrote it, and who chose the topic?
Re:Who asked this question? (Score:5, Informative)
We is the other two editors and myself. I wrote a few initial ideas and then it got passed around. I'm not sure if my boss picked the topic or someone at SourceForge. As rbowen eludes to in a thread above, this is a sort of test run to work out the kinks, but we still wanted to get a decent discussion going.
Re: (Score:3)
Unlike all other Ask Slashdots, this question is not prededed by "$USERNAME writes", so who actually proposed this question? A user that didn't get credit? A Slashdot editor? Someone from Sourceforge? The post introducing sponsored Ask Slashdots says that "the sponsors don't pick the questions", but that's still ambiguous. Many people are skeptical about this being thinly veiled astroturfing, so it's important to be as transparent as possible.
Well its refreshing to see them at least trying to thinly veil it. That's a step up from the last few years on here.
Encrypt First (Score:2, Insightful)
I would encrypt any sensitive data I may have before storing it in the "cloud". It would be irresponsible to assume the data can not be read or copied by others.
Sponsorships? Really? (Score:5, Insightful)
The fact that everyone else does it is still no excuse.
Re:Sponsorships? Really? (Score:5, Insightful)
Further, I imagine that the bandwidth and hosting costs of
I mean, with so many people here probably using AdBlock etc, or disabling ads because they're registered users who can, they have to get their ads-to-eyeballs ratio back up to somewhere that it's actually worth it to advertize here (this ensuring that our geeky community can continue to have someplace to live!)
Re:Sponsorships? Really? (Score:5, Insightful)
Slashdot is a geek tabloid. Don't expect journalistic integrity. Do expect entertaining discussion.
Is your medical data safe now? (Score:4, Interesting)
I used to be a security "expert" (at least according to my business card), but that was long enough ago, and things have changed sufficiently since then, that I no longer make that claim. However, back then, most of our customers happened to be in healthcare in some form or another, and I was appalled, on a daily basis, how insecure their data was. Any high school kid with some tools could completely own their network servers with very little effort. We hired one of those high school kids, and he frequently did.
Furthermore, with a little sweet talking, or looking under keyboards, we got access to all the stuff that he didn't. Granted, this was in the days immediately before HIPAA, and in the first days after HIPAA when people were trying to figure out how to implement the requirements. I naively hope that HIPAA has corrected some of the most glaring of these problems.
It's hard to imagine that putting data "in the cloud", whatever that happens to mean in the particular case under discussion, could be any less secure than where they're already storing your data.
Re:Is your medical data safe now? (Score:5, Interesting)
It's hard to imagine that putting data "in the cloud", whatever that happens to mean in the particular case under discussion, could be any less secure than where they're already storing your data.
Exactly. The amount of risk that is introduced by putting your data into the cloud is infinitesimal compared to the risk that already exists in your network due to your company's cultural lack of top-down focus on security. If your CEO has domain admin privileges to the network and does not actively manage the active directory structure, you probably have more serious security issues to worry about.
I am a current security expert, working at a security-conscious company. So far, I haven't seen any hypervisor exploits, so the largest source of failure from hosting your business in the cloud probably rests on being unable to access data because of your ISP or network outages. Shop around by comparing SLAs.
When hypervisor exploits do become known (and they will), the PCI council will likely put the hypervisor into scope - they're waffly about it right now. As soon as that happens, kiss your PCI-compliant cloud goodbye - the third-party compatibility for security tools used for PCI compliance in the cloud are abysmal. It will become very difficult for any cloud-based application to live up to the PCI standards. That's your real risk.
Absolutely not (Score:4, Insightful)
These days your data is your wealth. Putting it somewhere as vague as 'the cloud' is as dumb as keeping your life savings in a car belonging to someone you don't know and have no idea where that car might be located. (Probably in some trailer court.)
It's a marketing trap - don't fall for it.
Is your data safe in the cloud? (Score:4, Informative)
Re: (Score:3)
With the added caveat that it is not safe at your home either.
Define safe? (Score:2)
where does the cloud store their stuff? (Score:2)
that's the question. where do they store their internal email and data? in another cloud? in their own systems?
if they store it locally then why should i send my data to them?
security... from what? (Score:5, Interesting)
I am a lawyer, and the thought of trusting my data to the cloud makes me very nervous for several reasons.
1. Government access. If you trust the government to keep its hands off of your securely stored data, you are living in the 1960s. Federal and (most) state governments are too tempted by the possibility of using your data for good purposes to actually keep their hands off it. Employees (like the FBI) will peek at it, especially if you're famous. They will run "searches" to see "what comes up" and get a feel for whether the government needs to do something. Data should never be stored -with- the government, and government should be expressly forbidden from getting access to it after it is generated. They should be required to give you notice each time that they access your data and describe to you what they are looking for in it when they inevitably -do- access it.
2. Outside threats. I'm thrilled every time I read about botnet attacks and Anonymous hacks that get into some individual's or company's private data. (Sarcastically...) "Yes, I believe that my externally stored data is safe from outside intrusion and will not be stolen by criminals." No, I don't believe that. There is no routine requirement for encryption in business environments. If there isn't a robust, national / industry-wide data encryption plan that makes it easy for the end-user (the person whose data it -is-) to protect and access the data, I think that the cloud is too risky for storing really important information, rather than just having my music collection stored in iCloud or Amazon's service.
Also, email security, to me, seems to be a joke. Here, I don't worry about breakins to get at my information, although that has happened at many email providers. Rather, I worry about internal inspection of my information. I use Gmail, but I don't believe for a minute that Google, (or Facebook, which I don't use) doesn't sometimes run statistical analysis of the email stream or the google search bar terms I use to learn more about me. It's their business to know more about me so that they can make money advertising to me. You can be sure that they test their AdSense algorithm improvements on my data to enhance the chances that I'll click on an ad and make them a few per thousand clicks.
I will use the cloud as a backup with services like MozyPro, but only if I can have assurance that my information (my clients' information, really) is locked down tight. To my mind, "ease of access" from storing information in the cloud equates all too readily to "ease of theft" where the thieves don't even have to leave their desks in Mountain View or Moscow to "reach out and touch someone" (apologies, ATT). I much prefer to make the thieves go to all the bother of getting up and coming to my house or office to steal my data.
Is Your Data Safe In the Cloud? (Score:5, Insightful)
Is Your Data Safe In the Cloud?
No. Next story.
Re:Is Your Data Safe In the Cloud? (Score:5, Funny)
Is Your Data Safe In the Cloud?
No. Next story.
Not yet. The sponsor paid good money for this discussion.
Of course not (Score:3)
Ars actually just covered this for anybody not in the US - the Patriot Act is a huge barrier that is making it hard for US companies to do business. Nobody in their right mind trusts US cloud providers with their (subject to non US privacy law) data.
simple answer: no (Score:3)
I think VMware has got it right... (Score:5, Interesting)
This contrasts to some recent Microsoft events I've attended, where they were pushing Azure so freakin hard that one of the Microsoft guys was almost literally said, quote for quote, 'if your next SQL project isn't on Azure, you're making a BIG mistake'. Microsoft seems to be of the mindset that between Azure and Office365, it's a hole-in-one business case for every company on the planet, which it's not. They went on to sell their Intune service the same way - 'If you're not a big company that has your own SCOM/SCCM solution, then you're making a mistake if you don't use Intune'.
Bottom line, much more cloud snobbery from the Microsoft guys.
Government data and Open Source (Score:5, Interesting)
I've long thought that government software should be software of the people, by the people, for the people (to be a little over-poetic). If I pay for the development of software that's used to run, say, the TSA, then I should have access to that code. And if the IRS is using software to store my data, I should have access to that code so that I can verify that it's secure, and is calculating my tax refund correctly.
I'm not sure, as a non-lawyer who has never worked as a government contractor, whether such demands are at all realistic or probable, but I still think it's worth making the demands. While I'm confident that *my* congress critter didn't understand the letter I sent him on the subject (at least, based on his content-free response), I would encourage you to contact yours, and maybe there's one out there that would understand.
The medical data issue is a little less clear-cut, depending on whether medecine is socialized in your particular country.
Putting medical data in a shared data pool *promises* big things, certainly.
Every time I go to a doctor's office and have to fill out all the same data, yet again, or when I have to fill out yet another government form with all the same information that they already have, often two or three times on the same set of forms, I think, why, in 2011, do I have to fill out these forms at all, when they already have so much information on me that should be readily accessible? A retinal scan, or even an ID number, should be sufficient to avoid this. Why haven't we solved this problem yet? (Yes, that's a very naive position, largely inspired by the frustration of filling out the 8th form while other peoples' kids run around screaming and sneezing on me.)
But who do we trust to be that central repository of data, and not sell it to the highest bidder?
Where am I going to get all this upload bandwidth? (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm more concerned about what my ISP is going to say when I start uploading data by the gig on a regular basis.
Why is this article floating? (Score:5, Insightful)
My big problem with it is why this story seems to be 'floating' in the feed. All morning, it's been at the number two position. I don't really mind the glaring blue story staring at me, but I would appreciate it if it faded to oblivion just like the rest of the articles/stories/slashvertisements, so I don't have to continue to stare at this giant blue SourceForge logo when I browse the news feed. I had tried to keep an open mind, but this whole thing looks like an attempt to whore out the site for money.
Man, what is this bullshit (Score:3)
and how do I make it go away!
Mass noun (Score:5, Informative)
Re:It's hard to see it being less secure (Score:5, Interesting)
As I posted here: http://ask.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2563666&cid=38303250 [slashdot.org] - I've seen servers at hospitals, local governments, and various other supposedly-secure places (fire stations, airports, etc) in my years as a network security auditor. And I frequently peek under the keyboards in doctors' offices while I'm waiting for them. It's hard to imagine that storing data on someone else's server instead of their own is going to make any substantive difference in their data security posture.