MY HEAD IS IN THE CLOUDS

Today I am going to comment on cloud computing.

Cloud computing can mean many things to many people, and hold absolutely no meaning at all for others! For the sake of today’s blog entry, I will consider cloud computing any computing situation where the data and/or application is located somewhere on the Internet. For many people, this might include email – if they have a Yahoo or Gmail account, for example, that stores their email on a server and they use a Web browser to access it.

But what are the implications for cloud computing? From a security standpoint, your information is no more secure than the server 'in the cloud' it is stored on. The same goes for the reliability of your information, and the duration it is available.

Can this loss of control be a good thing? Perhaps. Many people do not encrypt the hard drives on their laptops – and then they get stolen. In that case, cloud computing is more secure. People also do not make timely backups of their data – then their hard drive fails. In that case, cloud computing is more reliable.

But on the other hand, what you put out on the Internet may be accessible to the whole world for... well, nearly forever. Even though the website that stores your data alleges to be secure, there is no end to stories of data being compromised for one reason or another.

So what is a person to do? Personally, I steer clear of putting anything highly confidential on the Internet. Information that isn’t there cannot be compromised. But I would not hesitate to use Internet companies for storing slightly sensitive data, as long as they have a track record of responsible operations. It is very convenient and productive to have access to that data when on the road. But it is also important to maintain a copy of that data locally so one is not in a world of hurt if the company starts having reliability or cost issues. And when it comes to Facebook, I wouldn’t post anything there that would upset me if it got disclosed to the whole world.