What Do You Think?

[troach]

There is a lot of talk these days about various companies trying to get business as well as home users to move to what is being called cloud systems/cloud computing for all of ones computing needs.

As a lot of people are not familiar with the term, let us talk a little about what a cloud system and cloud computing is. For those of us that are a little older the old term was remote system hosting or centralized computing.

If you have used yahoo!mail, google’s gmail or microsoft’s hotmail (or any of the other web based email hosts) you already have a very small taste of cloud computing. Your email is stored on a central server that you can access from any terminal/computer in the world that is connected to the internet.

Cloud computing takes this one step farther, instead of just email being hosted on a central computer. EVERYTHING that would normally be on your personal computer would now be hosted on a central server. Games, movies, pictures, finical records, documents, letters, everything.

There are some obvious and good advantages to this. The most obvious is that, assuming one has access to the internet you would now have all of your applications, documents, everything that you would normally have on your system at home or at work or wherever available to you no matter were you might be located. For instance if 6you are at home and need some information that is on your work system, you simply connect to your works cloud server and access the files, programs, etc. just as if you were sitting at your office desk. Or if you are at a friend’s house and want to show them some pictures that are on your home system, you just log on access the cloud server of your home system and poof you have access to everything just as if you were using your computer at home.

Plus with Cloud systems you will probably have access to many more applications, games, etc. than you probably would on your current home system as most hosting services will probably offer a wide variety of games, home business software, graphic utilities, etc., etc., etc. pre-configured and ready for use.

For today’s constantly on the go society this type of computer architecture does have a lot of advantages. You have access to all your files, information, etc. from anywhere you are. Potentially, even from some cell phones or handheld internet devices. (Though there are currently some hindrances with the smaller handheld devices, mostly because of the display size).

There is also the advantage for small to mid-size businesses in that they should be able to reduce cost of computer equipment, have access to better software than they would normally be able to afford, not to mention a larger (though mostly invisible to the company) computer staff maintaining the system(s), networks, backups, databases, etc. But the big advantage most companies would probably look at, is that cloud computing could greatly reduce the need for office space as well as internal networking, create greater control over what gets put on company systems by the employees. And if the company has offices in different locations, across town or on the other side of the planet, using the cloud server would allow all the offices to be synchronized with each other from software updates to database processing all handled at the cloud server site available to all the corporate offices at the same time. Not to mention with mobile internet connections remote sales staff could be connected to the office system at anytime from any location to enter sales immediately, invoices and receipts printed on the spot, shipments sent out even faster, gaining a much tighter inventory control. In short Cloud Systems if managed correctly should be able to offer many types of small to mid-size businesses the potential to be much more efficient with less over all expense.

Now . . . before we make cloud servers sound like it is the best thing ever.

There are some downsides to this type of processing; the biggest is that the remote accounts would have increased vulnerability to hacking/illegal access. I suspect we all know someone that has lost their yahoo mail/messenger, hotmail or gmail account because of someone hacking their account, guessing their password, or the owner carelessly talking about enough personal information for the unscrupulous person to be able to reset the password.

There are however ways to better insure that only the owner of an account gains accesses, for instance the person enters their personal password then they must use a remote access key to finish logging in. Remote access key devices are devices that the owner of the account must have in their possession to gain access to their account, either by inserting the device into the usb port of the computer, entering an access key number displayed on the device or some devices even scan the person finger print before sending the “okay” to the central computer. Thus making it very difficult for anyone other than the owner to gain access to an account.

However, in this day of corporate spying (on each other, as well as their employees), government snooping (in the name of national security), “media curiosity”, as well as just plain ole greed, there is also a new problem that arises by having all our information located at remote spot. Potentially the information stored on the Cloud server can be accessed by or can be given to people/groups that will use even innocent seemingly insignificant information/data against us. Or a less diabolical issue would be that everything you do on a company cloud server could be recorded and reviewed by a company official. (How many times have we all said/typed something negative or even hostile about the company, boss or coworker, not to be malicious but rather simply blowing off steam. For example after a very frustrating meeting or discovering that all the work and extra hours (of unpaid overtime) put in for the last week to complete what the boss handed you describing as “super critical upper management project” that MUST be finished within the week was a total waste . . . because two weeks before you were told anything about the “super critical project” that has to be competed so very quickly, upper management decided it wanted something completely different.

Any statements made using the companies cloud server, even if using private email or chat, anything you type or say via voice conversation on the computer could be recorded and used against you. Of course that can and does happen now, it would just be easier with the centralized cloud server, as even remote office or virtual home office workers could also easily be recorded and traced.

But if one uses the technology carefully and wisely there really are a lot of advantages to cloud computing and cloud servers.

The question that we each have to ask ourselves before “jumping on board” is do the benefits outweigh the risks?

[Jevezoste]

Why not talk about the things that some would call being overly paranoid about security risks of cloud servers . . . but in today's world are becoming very real concerns?

For instance, let's say you speak out against high-level government officials or are a member of a group that is "annoying" to the government (for example groups trying to fight government corruption and waste). How difficult would it be for the government to get the company storing your information to hand over a copy of everything in your account? (Even without a warrant) Remember governments require businesses (especially major businesses) to have various licenses and permits. Plus some backbone internet companies are in business only because of the government grants they receive to provide the internet services. How easy is it for the government to simply have the paperwork get "lost" or just flat out reject the renewal of the company's licenses permits or grants unless they "quietly" give over the information.

Even simpler how much of a bribe would it take to get an employee at the hosting company to make a "quiet copy" of someone's or a company's data? How difficult would it be for a group to encourage/pay a person to get hired on at a hosting company in a position that has access to the data? Working at the hosting company for perhaps years quietly passing along information to the other company. While the other company holds the data for months or years until it is advantageous for them to use the information.

While there are a lot of advantages to cloud computing there are also a lot of risks especially from governments, businesses, and groups that are increasing trying to control what information is said about their organizations, how their employees present themselves outside of work or the ever increasing eavesdropping of the government in the name of national security.