The Cloud Part 2 -- Hacking the Cloud: When Your Data ISN’T Safe…

If you’re a Play Station “fan boy” (or girl), you probably received an email from Sony offering you free games (in exchange for something about account security). The PlayStation Network shut down it’s cloud after “an external intrusion” that resulted in the theft of personal information belonging to 77 million customers. In fact, PSN said they’re moving their network infrastructure and data center to a new, more secure location.

Or, you might remember when Amazon’s Elastic Compute Cloud and Elastic Block Storage platforms were offline during an April 21 outage that had major websites unavailable for three days.
Outages and security breaches like these have inspired fear that the Cloud may not be secure – or is less secure than a traditional data center; however, eWeek.com points out that major security holes are not unique to cloud services. PSN uses both cloud services and traditional data centers. Amazon’s outage drew attention to data availability issues and reliability. Security concerns exist in both cloud and traditional data center environments. Cloud security is not inferior to data center security, where information can be accessed by a slew of hacking techniques.

eWeek adds, “People generally [haven’t heard] about outages in [traditional] data centers because they affected only one organization and were smaller scale, but they often add up to far more lost time, money and business…”

The problem traces back to encryption. EVERYTHING should be encrypted in both traditional data centers and on the cloud, from network traffic to S3 storage to file systems. And the sensitive data? That information should be especially encrypted. The tools are out there, but companies might not realize just how secure their data needs to be. An article by George Reese on the O’Reilly community adds:
“You should create a security system with the assumption that someone will gain unintended access to your data. It’s not that the cloud makes it more or less likely; it’s simply that a) there are attack vectors in the cloud that you have less control over and b) it’s a good idea anyways.”

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

57 Years After the March on Washington, Have MLK’s Dreams been Realized?

I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal."  – Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (August 28, 1963) Fifty-seven years ago, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. led the March on Washington D.C., where 250,000 people gathered in one of the largest political rallies in U.S. history. The March is credited with helping pass the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964, and Dr. King delivered his famous “I Have a Dream” speech from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. While Dr. King’s speech is rightfully immortalized, fewer remember that the March’s organizers at the time also had very concrete political demands that were as much about economic justice as racial equality. On the recent anniversary of the March, I began to wonder whether or not the March’s “10 Demands” for freedom, education and equality have been realized – and, more importantly, what we still need to do as a nat
Read more
MEGATHREATS? MAYBE, BUT NOT INEVITABLE I recently read "Megathreats: The Ten Trends That Imperil Our Future, and How to Survive Them" by Nouriel Roubini (made famous as the predictor of the 2008-9 housing crisis). It is purposefully, "alarming. Roubini lists 10 "Megathreats:" The mother of all debt crises -- he points out that public and private debt is 350% of Gross World Product. He forecasts that defaults like Argentina (9 times since 1816 independence) will be commonplace. The bailout trap -- when banks go bad, government bails them out; when autos go bad, government bails them out; when utilities fail...you get the point. The demographic time bomb -- western civilization (and Japan) are rapidly aging. Old people don't produce, and young people don't save. The easy money trap leading to cycles of booms and busts. Stagflation Currency meltdowns Border closings and deglobalization -- immigration into the north from the south has kept labor
Read more

Thinking Of Selling NFTs? Consider These Tech And Legal Factors First

 The buzz around nonfungible tokens (NFTs) is reaching a fever pitch. Enthusiasts claim NFTs will permanently alter how we buy and sell everything from artwork and music to fashion and real estate. Skeptics say they are yet another overhyped bubble destined to burst — the Dutch tulips or Beanie Babies of the 2020s.  It’s too early to tell which camp will prevail, but there’s no denying that NFTs are sparking fascinating conversations about technology, art, culture and authenticity across a wide range of industries. I recently wrote a simple guide to NFTs from a consumer perspective, asking pertinent questions related to legal, financial and even environmental issues. Now let’s look at the other side of the token and explore the considerations for sellers.  How NFTs Work   NFTs are digital assets that exist on a blockchain — usually the cryptocurrency Ethereum blockchain — and are used to represent collectibles, such as videos, images, music and memes. Each NFT has a unique valuation an
Read more