On and Off the Cloud

On the heels of my last column about cloud computing, there is plenty of confirmation that the cloud is here and that some clouds may be dark and stormy.

Platform Wars
A couple of days ago, Eric Schmidt, Executive Chairman of Google discussed the "Platform Wars" at D9, the annual All Things Digital conference.  Schmidt referred to four dominant players who have used their distinctive platforms to dominant the web:  Google, Apple, Facebook and Amazon.  What about Microsoft?  Forget about Microsoft, says Schmidt; it isn't a player on this field.

Store It In My Cloud
This comes close on the heels of Amazon's move to get us to upload our music and other files (with encouragement to buy more from Amazon) onto its "Cloud Drive".  Apple responded with its own cloud storage initiative, named (who would have guessed) iCloud, which debuted on June 6 at the Apple's World-Wide Developers Conference.  It is clear that the platform players are jockeying to get you on their cloud (and tied to content that they sell or make money through advertising).  So the Cloud Wars are heating up too.

It's Security, Stupid!
Now for the dark side.  As discussed in my last column, the "cloud" is really using someone else's computer.  Instead of computing or storing things on your desktop, or your laptop, or your smartphone, you using computers and servers on the Internet and storing information, documents, financial records, music, videos and other data on someone else's computer.  When you use Facebook, you are piling up personal comments, pictures and information on Facebook's servers.  If you play on XBox Live or some other online gaming platform, you are leaving information with the servers for those gaming platforms, whether it is gaming preferences and history or financial information to pay for the service.  Think about the computing that you do on the "cloud" and what you leave behind.  Think about it again when you are prompted by an app on Facebook that requests permission to access your Facebook personal information, friends and other data that you have left behind.  What do you think those apps are doing with that information?  Building you a better cow in Farmville?

It turns out that other people's servers may be no more secure than your own.  Servers for major platforms on the Internet may be even bigger targets than your computer for security breaches.  As the story goes, when bank robber Willie Sutton was asked why he robbed banks, said he did it because banks "where the money is".  In cloud computing, big computer servers are where the information is.

Recently we have seen hackers breach Nintendo's servers.  Now comes a more frightening wave.  Computers at major defense contractors have been breached.  Big time defense contractors: Northrop Grumman, Lockheed Martin and L3 Communications.  The report just linked is even grimmer in that it says that prevention of such breaches by serious hackers (who may include foreign governments) is very difficult, if not impossible, to achieve.  One weakness:  People.  Servers are attached to networks and networks connect people, and people are the weakest link.  People can be convinced to "leave the door unlocked" and let the bad guys in.

So, cloud computing is here to stay, but be careful, because you may be the weakest link.