Cloud Security Issues Come To The Fore

Early adopters moving their IT to the cloud may be benefitting from reduced costs, but are their security and regulatory needs being met, an online conference will ask next week.

Early critics of cloud computing have claimed that it is simply not as secure as in-house IT, but service providers such as Google who offer cloud-based applications have made a strong defence. Now, critics are focussing on the next level of issues, including the difficulty of meeting regulations – when personal data used by enterprise applications may be stored and moved internationally by cloud-based services.

The Cloud Security summit, a virtual event run by BrightTalk on 30 September, will include several presentations on how to meet regulations, in a full day’s programme about using cloud services securely.

“[Public cloud providers] don’t have the pieces to meet the regulatory requirements; they don’t have the means to meet the compliance issues related to security,” Amy DeCarlo, principal analyst for managed IT services at Current Analysis, told eWEEK. “That’s not to say there won’t be a time, or that cloud service providers can’t provide something useful to the enterprise.”

Despite DeCarlo’s criticisms, it’s evident that vendors and service providers have already done lots of work around regulations and compliance. The BrightTalk summit includes a presentation on Cloud Computing and the Law, from Miranda Mowbray of Hewlett-Packard, and a round table on cloud compliance, which will include BT, the Open Group and SafeNet, along with other sessions on international regulatory issues and legal matters.

It also features presentations on more traditional security concerns such as the handling of virtualised server resources.

“At this summit, industry leaders will dive into the different security options available across multiple cloud architectures,” said James Harris vice president of BrightTalk’s security sector. “case studies and association presentations will further illustrate the security issues facing the cloud today.”