In the research I did for my May issue story on cloud computing in K12, for all the benefits, convenience, power and glory that is cloud computing, the one question that always comes up is security. Is it smart to keep your important info off in some mysterious location, stored in a server you know-not-where, depending on some corporation to keep it safe?
Some of you out there were probably affected by the slowdown yesterday that left 14 percent of Google users up a creek. Apparently, an Asian data center was vulnerable to a good old fashioned traffic jam. How's that for globalization?
PC World has an interesting reflection editorial today about the incident, raising the question of the wisdom of cloud computing.
True, it's an interesting question, but the conclusion I came to about the security concerns in cloud computing still holds: server security is all that these companies offer really, without it they are nothing. So you can bet Google is putting every resource they have into making sure these incidents just plain don't happen.
Imagine a bank gets robbed or explodes in a freak accident. Do you say "There's no way I'm trusting someone else to store my money, I'm withdrawing it and keeping it in my dresser drawers with guns locked and loaded by my side?" The chances are pretty slim overall that this could happen to you. Ah, but your money is insured by the federal government, that's a big difference. So perhaps that's a solution, somehow? Can data be insured? Or perhaps regulations enacted that ensure multiple levels of redundancy, and guarantee that users can retrieve everything in the event a company goes out of business? Or will the free market end up creating these guarantees, as Google competitors arrive with more reliable track records? Something to think about. But clearly, I think cloud computing is in no danger and the trend will continue at a rapid pace.
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