The RDV Group InfoSec Blog

Monday, April 19, 2010

Great Cloud Article in today's NY Times

Brad Stone and Ashlee Vance have a must-read piece in today's (Monday 4/19/10) New York Times Business section about how companies, in particular Netflix, are moving to a full cloud computing model. As Dr. Ronald Krutz and I are finalizing our most recent text for John S. Wiley and Sons: Cloud Security: A Comprehensive Guide to Secure Cloud Computing (due out this August), it's heartening to see such a clear and direct description of the drivers for an organization's adoption of cloud computing in the popular press.

One section is especially succinct, as it describes Netflix's seemingly incongruous adoption of a rival's technology:

"Kevin McEntee, Netflix's vice president of engineering, said Netflix switched in order to 'focus our innovation around finding movies, rather than building larger and larger data centers.' As for tethering Netflix's future to a rival, Mr. McEntee said, 'It's in their interest to make us successful in the cloud. That's why we felt comfortable."

Cloud computing will make for some strange bedfellows, but the assurance of the preservation of the three tenets of information systems security (confidentiality, integrity and availability) will have to be continually addressed in a manner that makes more companies comfortable about the move.