Storing Data in the Cloud
I want to open this up with a question posed by j9er on twitter:
j9er Taking cloud computing to its ultimate outcome, does ayone care that, say, Microsoft would have all your data? Or, Google?
My concise response: yes, I care. But the three primary reasons go beyond the 140 characters twitter would allot me.
Unrestricted Access
The big thing that keeps me from being completely comfortable with a third party storing my data for me is whether I would have unrestricted access to my data. Currently, users are even having problems with google disabling access to its user’s gmail accounts. So say Google or Microsoft have all my data, not just my e-mail and some google docs: how are they going to guarantee that I can access my data how I want, when I want, and wherever I want?
Security
Beyond that, security is an issue. On my home system or my personal servers, I can guarantee their security, as I am the sole administrator of my nodes and I am security conscious. Additionally, my personal data is not coveted by malicious hackers. The amount of effort it would take for someone to gain access to my machines externally is definitely not worth the information they would gain access to. However, when the information of millions of users is aggregated into one location, that data becomes extremely attractive. So the second question becomes: how can the company guarantee the security of the cloud, and the security of the information within? (On that note, I highly reccommend the cloudsecurity blog, where they attempt to answer these questions.)
Privacy
The last concern is one I am sure most people familiar with the topic have thought about. Storing information with an organization involves a great amount of trust, and when it is done improperly people raise their voices. (A good example is any time the CIA/NSA/FBI want to merge databases. If you do it without consent, it is an improper collection of information.) Storing information in the cloud therefore needs to be consensual, guarded well, and exposed only to the owner and applications owned by the organization, but never reviewed by humans, and with all personally identifying information scrubbed. The final question therefore is: how can the organization storing my data guarantee my personal privacy?
I care about my data. Especially who has it, who may have access to it, and how it may be used to identify me. Until the questions can be answered and those guarantees made, I won’t be comfortable storing all my data in the cloud.
