Cloud computing security: Who knew?

摘要

Cloud computing is big even though there is less than perfect agreement on just what it is. As a measure of success, Google gets more than 25 million hits for the term "cloud computing". If you add "security" to the search you still get 20 million hits, but a lot of the hits turn out to be articles focusing on the security issues withrncloud computing. A representative example is an article quoting Cisco CEOrnJohn Chambers saying that cloud computing is "a security nightmare." It's good to see that there are now some potentially meaningful efforts to think about the security issues with cloud computing.rnOne of these is by the ad-hoc Cloud Security Alliance, which published a "Security Guidance for Critical Areas of Focus in Cloud Computing" white paper last week. Sad to say the guidance is as focused as the white paper's title.rnThe alliance does seem to have its heart in the right place, and the white paper provides a very good overview of what cloud computing includes, but it also demonstrates clearly that the understanding of cloud computing is quite fuzzy with far too many facets.The white paper lists five principal characteristics of cloud computing, three cloud delivery models and four cloud service deployment and consumption modalities. It seems like cloud computing can be just about any combination of these facets.