Security In the Ether 93
theodp writes "Technology Review's David Talbot says IT's next grand challenge will be to secure the cloud — and prove we can trust it. 'The focus of IT innovation has shifted from hardware to software applications,' says Harvard economist Dale Jorgenson. 'Many of these applications are going on at a blistering pace, and cloud computing is going to be a great facilitative technology for a lot of these people.' But there's one little catch. 'None of this can happen unless cloud services are kept secure,' notes Talbot. 'And they are not.' Fully ensuring the security of cloud computing, says Talbot, will inevitably fall to emerging encryption technologies."
You Cannot Trust Anyone with your Data. (Score:2, Interesting)
The problem is you can't trust anyone with your data. For the systems to do something (other than store) your data it must be unencrypted. If it's unencrypted, it's not safe from prying eyes. (Internal sysadmins and external eavesdroppers who have compromised systems in the cloud.) End of story.
Remember there's two kinds of trust, "I'm giving you they keys to the kingdom and I believe you won't do anything bad while I'm not looking," and "I've locked everything and I trust the locks will hold against malicious attackers." You will never get trust #1 from anyone, especially not a corporation. And I don't trust locks will hold ; )
Re:Whom are we securing it from? (Score:4, Interesting)
in other words, encrypt, encrypt encrypt.
i am really considering printing public key barcodes on business cards, and refuse to accept mails that are not encrypted...
as it is right now, people are mentally considering email like enveloped mail, while in networking terms its more like postcards. I wonder how much this can be blamed on mail software that shows unread mail as unopened envelopes...
Re:I'm a nigger (Score:1, Interesting)
Since when have niggers been allowed to own property? Tell the truth; you stole that computer from a white person.