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Taking Privacy into the Cloud

Contributed Article by Geoff Webb - Director of Product Marketing at Credant Technologies

Next year will see some big changes in the cloud.  Specifically three important changes are about to occur in the way that cloud services, especially cloud storage, are used.  Like most significant changes, these have been building quietly for a while, but by the end of 2012, all three will have caused a radical shift in the way that people think about, and use, cloud for storage for storing and sharing information. 

The first of these is really a simple continuation, and acceleration, of a trend that has been under way for the last few years - the growth of mainstream cloud storage solutions such as Dropbox and Box.net to the point where they pass from cutting edge to common place.  Dropbox alone now has over 25  million users and that number grows by a significant amount monthly.  And as the number of users grows, so does the explosive viral impact of these technologies.  One of the primary reasons people use this kind of cloud service is to share their files with others.   Each new user therefore inevitably introduces the idea to sever others.  So the growth has been, and should continue to be, close to geometric in magnitude.

The second trend will be the growing consumerization of cloud services in the enterprise.  While big business has regarded the use of cloud services with a profoundly mixed set of emotions, the question of whether to adopt cloud storage solutions for business use will become rapidly moot.  Once enough users bring their own cloud storage with them to the office, the opportunity to lock out cloud will be gone.  In fact, it could be argued that for many businesses that point has been passed.   In either case as the growth of home-user cloud storage accelerates, and it will, so the degree to which those services impact business use will grow too.  The tidal wave is coming, and business needs to learn to swim, quickly. 

While the first two points may sound like bad news for most enterprise security folks, there is some good news on the horizon too.  The big concerns for business in the cloud generally revolve around lack of control over information once it has left the network perimeter.  But more and more organizations are looking at ways to extend their controls out into the cloud- and once again it may be consumerization that leads the way.   

As home users become worried that the privacy of files they store on line may be compromised, new technologies are being developed that will place control over the data firmly in the hand of the user themselves; no longer relying on the cloud provider to keep data safe.  These solutions, implementing  strong and relatively transparent encryption of files, let the user (be they your grandma in Iowa or your Doctor in California) keep control over the data and who sees it.   They will transparently encrypt the data as it moves from your device into the cloud, and then decrypt it as it moves back.  This means that the cloud storage provider themselves never have access to the unencrypted data - so the concerns over control and privacy are removed.  And most importantly, such solutions (including Credant's own) will let you simply and securely share the ability to access those files with others - an important reason people go to the cloud in the first place. 

This represents a huge step forward.  Because once control over the privacy of data in the cloud is wrested from the cloud provider and returned to the end user, the opportunity to fully, safely, embrace the power and promise of cloud computing will be available for all of use. 

And that's going to be big news.

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About the Author

Geoff Webb has over 20 years of experience in the tech industry and is a senior member of the product marketing team at Credant Technologies. Geoff provides commentary on security and compliance trends for such journals and websites as: eSecurityPlanet, CIO Update, The Tech Herald, Compliance Authority, Virtual Strategy Magazine, and many others. Prior to Credant, Geoff held management positions at NetIQ, FutureSoft, SurfControl and JSB. Geoff holds a combined bachelor of science degree in computer science and prehistoric archaeology from the University of Liverpool.