Is Data In The Cloud Risky? – Plug Into The Cloud – InformationWeek.

With therecent report that the FTC is considering a request to shut down Google Apps, the question of Cloud Security has come up and with it the question of if data in the cloud is risky. Of course only the government could hold a two day hearing on whether or not data in the cloud is at risk.

Data is always at risk. No matter if its in the cloud, on your servers and especially on your user’s laptops.

You can certainly make the case that the data you control is safer. This assumes that data in your local data center is not at risk. Its safe to assume you have safeguards in place so that no one can hack into your network and get to your data, yet we see reports almost daily that this happens. I also assume that you have taken appropriate measures to make sure no one can walk out of your buildings with a USB drive full of customer sensitive data. Is it also safe to assume you have locked down every laptop that goes through the front doors at night? Is it safe to assume that you have auditing capabilities so you will know if the spreadsheet containing sensitive payroll data has been emailed to a gmail account?

Software from companies likeSymantec,Promisec andCofio Software can help implement and administer all that security and endpoint protection. Archive storage companies likePermabit,EMC andNexSan have the ability to encrypt data that is stored on their servers. So the question is have you?

Continues @http://www.informationweek.com

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