End user risk plagues the rise of cloud computing

Dive Brief:

Cloud computing offers major benefits to schools, and while there are risks that have presented barriers to adoption for some, experts say there are ways to mitigate risk and still see the advantages.

EdTech: Focus on K-12 reports data breaches are a top concern, but districts can encrypt their data to offer another layer of protection. And though risks presented by end users are serious, awareness campaigns can help. Finally, targeted outreach to teachers can ensure they understand why they shouldn’t sign up for cloud-based applications on their own.

IT professionals can avoid a good deal of risk by doing their due diligence on the front end, finding out which vendors will keep data safe, private and secure and follow FERPA guidelines before entering into any contracts.

Your network, IoT, cloud computing and the future

My previous series of posts talked about a present problem for anyone deploying on the internet: what do you need to measure when deploying into the cloud and how do you measure cloud performance?

But planning and deployment issues are not restricted to just the immediate-term questions I was tackling there. Anyone in charge of a network has to think about how that network will evolve. The next articles in this series will be about the internet of the future and will suggest ways in which the internet seems likely to develop.

One of the astonishing things about the internet is that it is voluntary. With very little central organization, the internet emerges because it interconnects networks. And because of network effects, interconnecting different networks makes those networks more valuable, particularly when the network merely provides interconnection for intelligent applications at the edges of the network. This nature of the internet is what has allowed it to subsume other communications technologies.

Cloud computing: You are probably ignoring the biggest security flaw

Even if your code is hacker-proof, there's still one way into your systems and it's much tougher to patch.

There's an ongoing debate about the security implications of using cloud computing services versus running IT systems in-house.

Cloud advocates note that the largest cloud companies will have hundreds, or even thousands, of security staff and the time and money to keep their systems up to date. In contrast, the average enterprise may only have a handful of security staff to cover a wide range of different systems, many of which may be ageing and incapable of being entirely secure. However, some businesses feel more secure holding their critical data themselves rather than trusting it to a cloud company that may spread it across datacenters in different countries.

But however good the systems are, the weak link is always the humans, according to ethical hacker and penetration tester Jamie Woodruff

Apple's Mac future resides in the cloud

Absence makes the mind speculate. At least, that's the case for industry observers waiting to see what happens with Apple's overall Mac strategy this week.

My ZDNet colleague, David Gewirtz, believes that Apple's lack of innovation in Mac product releases over the last several years seems to indicate that the platform is running out of steam -- that effectively, the company has "given up" and has ceded mobile PC computing to its competitors, namely Microsoft.

I think "given up" is a bit too strong of a descriptor. I think the correct term is closer to "transitioning away from".

Apple has, since the rise of the iPhone and the iPad and the App Store ecosystem, been deriving most of its income from mobile device products, not Macs.

Cloud Security Survey: 2016 Results

In the second annual Cloud Security Survey, CloudPassage surveyed the more than 300,000 members of LinkedIn’s Information Security Community on the state of cloud security. As companies continue to invest in the cloud to reduce IT costs and increase flexibility and scalability, privacy and security of data remain top concerns.

Among the key findings include the following:

Security concerns are the number one barrier to cloud adoption. General security concerns (53%) top the list, followed by legal and regulatory compliance concerns (42%-up from 29% in last year’s survey) and data loss and leakage risks (40%).

Yes, The Cloud Can Be A Security Win

With the right controls in place, the cloud doesn't have to be a scary place. These guidelines can help your company stay safe.

There are so many different kinds of clouds - public, private, hybrid, internal - that many businesses and customers have difficulty deciding which is the right one for them. Furthermore, many businesses may use a few different variations of cloud environments - a private cloud for their own intranet, a hybrid cloud to keep some data on premises and some off premises to meet compliance regulations, and a public cloud for low-risk data.

These different types of environments make it difficult for IT and security teams to monitor every cloud on every device, or to monitor access requests for each different type of cloud environment. If you don’t control the cloud or where your data and apps reside, don’t manage them, or don’t know what you have in the cloud, your risk starts to sprawl and you don’t even know what’s happened when there’s a breach - or where to start to remediate. Follow these guidelines to make sure you avoid the cloud’s possible pitfalls.

Silicon Valley Data Center Market Poised for Growth

An illustration of what the Vantage Data Centers campus in Santa Clara will look like upon completion. The company is building two new data centers on the campus. (Image: Vantage Data Centers)

We continue our series of stories on the leading geographic markets for data center space. Data Center Frontier is partnering with DatacenterHawk to provide in-depth market reports on each city we profile.

Silicon Valley is America’s leading engine of business innovation. It is also one of largest and most important data center markets in the U.S., providing space to deploy new hardware and services from the Valley’s marquee technology companies, as well as a legion of fast-moving startups.