Cloud Watch

The cloud is a very hot issue at the moment. The media, cloud based organisations and some very mainstream IT companies are starting to ramp up the hype. The reality is that it is really no more than the internet itself. A bunch of servers that can be accessed anywhere that share data.

However, the concept of the 'cloud' has become somewhat,, errr, cloudy? SaaS (Software as a Service), which means running some software on a server and letting a client access it (eg. a web browser) is using that hype to good effect. Online accounting software is a case in point. New services are springing up everywhere in the hunt for a new never-ending income stream, with claims such as 'access anywhere anytime'.

This all sounds great until you look at the other side of the equation. Subscriptions that never stop (and if you stop paying you lose the service and the ability to view your data in a meaningful manner). Your data held on some server somewhere on the planet. You have no idea what legal jurisdiction there may be. Who is allowed access. Whether the service will continue in the future (either not at all because the company disappears or because it is swallowed up and turned into something else by a bigger company).

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On top of that there are the problems with connections. Their server could go down. Their ISP could go down. Your ISP could go down. If you swap provider, will it be seamless? If you move, will your new ISP be set up on time? What happens if you cannot log on?

The US passed a law allowing any judge to demand access to anyone's data regardless of encryption. That means that regardless of 256bit or higher encryption of your data, if a judge says they need to see your data, then the ISP must grant access. And that means it doesn't matter what you or your service provider does to your data, someone in the service centre will be able to read it.

Here is a list of the recorded outages of major ISP and other hosting and service providers currently in the news as well as accounts that have been compromised in some way:

http://it.slashdot.org/story/12/03/01/1452225/azure-failure-was-a-leap-year-glitch?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Slashdot%2Fslashdot+%28Slashdot%29

http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/12/01/20/1755207/what-happens-to-your-files-when-a-cloud-service-shuts-down?utm_source=feedburnerGoogle+Reader&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Slashdot%2Fslashdot+%28Slashdot%29&utm_content=Google+Reader

http://www.tgdaily.com/business-and-law-features/59662-quickbooks-goes-d...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-14851455

http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2011/08/07/lightning-in-dubl...

http://www.pcr-online.biz/news/36745/The-dark-side-of-the-cloud

http://www.zdnet.com/blog/igeneration/microsoft-admits-patriot-act-can-access-eu-based-cloud-data/11225

http://www.thecommentator.com/index.php/article/244/if_the_lulzsec_hackers_really_have_got_the_uk_census_we_re_in_big_trouble

http://viodi.com/2011/04/22/amazons-ec2-outage-proves-cloud-failure-recovery-is-a-myth/

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2365179,00.asp

http://www.cio.com/article/684164/Acer_Says_Names_Emails_Hacked_in_Europe

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304778304576375911873193624.html