Feds: Cloud Computing Doesn't Increase Security Risk
Federal officials defended their move to adopt cloud computing, stressing steps federal agencies are taking to ensure the technology does not present greater cybersecurity risks than already exist today, on Capitol Hill Thursday.
"Our problems with security are not unique to cloud-computing systems," David McClure, associate administrator for the General Services Administration's (GSA's) Office of Citizen Services and Innovative Technologies, told the House Subcommittee on Cybersecurity, Infrastructure Protection, and Security Technologies in a hearing about the security implications of the federal government's aggressive move to the cloud.
McClure was responding to a question by committee chairman Rep. Dan Lungren, who argued that the federal government has a responsibility to those who question whether cloud computing is a more easily penetrable system than in-house and legacy systems. To ease their fears, Lungren said, "you've got to have a promise that the security of the cloud is going to be measurably better than the security we have in the current system."
