Security remains a top concern for cloud app builders
Security, cited as an issue with cloud computing when the concept began to take hold several years ago, remains a pivotal concern for developers, an IBM official stressed on Wednesday afternoon.
Executives from IBM and Amazon sparred over the degree of security issues pertinent to cloud computing during a conference panel session at the ZendCon 2011 event in Santa Clara, Calif. Transitioning from a dedicated facilities to a shared environment in the cloud means developers must build proper security in their applications, said Mac Devine, IBM Distinguished Engineer. Developers cannot assume the public cloud provider will secure everything, he warned: "You can't depend on the fact that, 'OK, nobody can get behind my firewall.'"
"You need to be thinking differently. It's a shared environment," he said. Risk comes with the collaboration enabled by the cloud, Devine added. But Jeff Barr, senior Web services evangelist at cloud provider Amazon Web Services, shot back, "I do agree that you need to worry about security, but you also have to realize that you do get effectively infrastructure that has a lot of [a security focus] already built into it." Instead, developers need to worry about application-level security, Barr said.
