Protecting your data: Cloud Security Alliance

At the Evolve.CLOUD conference in Sydney CSO sat down with Archie Reed, CTO Strategic Enterprise Services APAC and Japan for HP, to talk about the Cloud Security Alliance for which Reed is also a member. He outlined the global organisation's goals for standardising security in the cloud, education and certification, and what it means for companies looking to or making a transition to the cloud. 

"What is the value of your data?" he starts by saying, before elaborating that any business decision to involve cloud services must be based around the value of your data, and the trade-off that can be involved in moving that data to the cloud. There may be cost incentives, or business flexibility by employing cloud services, but it comes with its own risks.

First and foremost is who has access to that data. Hosted with a third-party, a company is inherently trusting the cloud service to protect that data, and not just from hackers -- the threat of government intervention to obtain data from a service was raised more than once at the conference, with the US Patriot Act being held up as an example.