When asked why he robbed banks, Willie Sutton once supposedly said (although he later disavowed this quote), "Because that's where the money is." Today, the most important corporate assets still reside behind the firewall. Tomorrow? The "money" may well be in the cloud.

One advantage of the cloud is that for the major providers it is in their interest to secure their environments. If Amazon or Google is responsible for the next Heartland-scale data breach, their business will suffer.

Major providers know this and are taking steps to prevent it.

"Networks long ago ceased to be isolated physical islands. As companies found the need to connect to other companies, and then the Internet, their networks became connected with public infrastructure," says spokeswoman Rena Lunak.