Cloud security fears are overblown, some say

19.02.2009
It may sound like heresy to say it, but it's possible to worry a little too much about security in cloud computing environments, speakers at IDC's Cloud Computing Forum said on Wednesday.

Security is the number-one concern cited by IT managers when they think about cloud deployments, followed by performance, availability, and the ability to integrate cloud services with in-house IT, according to IDC's research.

Keeping data secure is critical, of course, but companies need to be realistic about the level of security they achieve inside their own business, and how that might compare to a cloud provider such as Amazon Web Services or Salesforce.com, speakers here said.

"I think a lot of security objections to the cloud are emotional in nature, it's reflexive," said Joseph Tobolski, director for cloud computing at Accenture. "Some people create a list of requirements for security in the cloud that they don't even have for their own data center."

That was the experience of Doug Menefee, CIO at Schumacher Group, which provides emergency room management services to hospitals. The company is in the midst of a project to migrate most of its applications to hosted, cloud-based services.

"My IT department came to me with a list of 100 security requirements and I thought, Wait a minute, we don't even have most of that in our own data center," he said in an interview here.