Fear Hackers? First invest in an IT security culture change

Amazon’s Jeff Bezos on Cloud Computing

By G C Network | June 18, 2008

Amazon’s Jeff Bezos on Cloud Computing How and when Amazon began its cloud computing effort.Why Amazon has become an innovator with Amazon Web Services and how it relates to their…

Dataline, IBM, Google, Northrop Grumman on Cloud Computing

By G C Network | June 17, 2008

My company, Dataline LLC, in cooperation with IBM, Google and Northrop Grumman Mission Systems, is sponsoring an educational series entitled “Cloud Computing in a Netcentric Environment“. The series will be…

EMC Studies Cloud Computing Security

By G C Network | June 17, 2008

Storage firm EMC has joined the Daoli Trusted Infrastructure Project which conducts research into “trust and assurance” in cloud computing environments. The team’s research will focus on cloud computing, trusted…

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By G C Network | June 17, 2008

For explaination and details see Understanding the Cloud Computing/SaaS/PaaS markets: a Map of the Players in the Industry by Peter Laird, Kent Dickson, and Steve Bobrowski from Oracle. Update: Please…

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By G C Network | June 16, 2008

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IBM Cloud Computing Center

By G C Network | June 13, 2008

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By G C Network | June 13, 2008

Elastic Utility Computing Architecture for Linking Your Programs To Useful Systems (EUCALYPTUS) is a new project that seems to be trying to put an “open source” flavor to cloud computing.…

The Honorable John G. Grimes Speaks about Cloud Computing

By G C Network | June 12, 2008

Today I had the pleasure of hearing The Honorable John G. Grimes, Assistant Secretary of Defense for Networks and Information Intergration and Department of Defense CIO, speak on some key…

Amazon leads Google into the cloud (So what else is new)

By G C Network | June 12, 2008

In this May 1, 2008 Globe and Mail Update article, Mathew Ingram provides an excellent comparison of Amazon and Google’s cloud computing initiatives. Bottom line: Amazon leads the pack with…

Web 2.0 Expo – What is Cloud Computing?

By G C Network | June 11, 2008

For some interesting views, take a look at these video interviews on what is cloud computing. These were done during the recent Web 2.0 Expo, April 22-25 in San Francisco,…

by
Kevin L.Jackson

 With all the news these days about cyberterrorism and hacking the cloud may seem like the last place you would want to put your precious information. Pew Research has even suggested that cyber-attacks are likely to increase. Some 61% of over 1600 security expert respondents to a recent survey said “yes” that a major attack causing widespread harm would occur by 2025,according to the Pew Research study. The cold hard fact, however, is that fear of the cyberterrorist and hackers, while definitely valid, is mostly misplaced.  I hold this contrarian view, because when you pull back the curtain on many of the recent breaches, you’ll likely see a mirror!

In a recent case, sensitive data including passwords seem to have been stored in the clear which is against all recommended best practices. There also may have been significant involvement from a company insider.  Focusing on application hacks, some of the most devastating have been due to a failure of the application developers to follow some basic best practices for application development.  Another important fact is that most of these breaches were not on cloud service providers.  These successful attacks were on enterprise built and managed IT infrastructures.

Our failure to protect our information and data is mostly due to our less than focused attitude towards cybersecurity.  Policies, procedures and processes play an important part in preventing security incidents but more is needed.  Every organizational employee must realize that they could be an entry point for hackers and be aware of their individual actions.  IT professionals must follow industry standard best practices for application development, network configuration, system configuration, etc. Many of which have gone through multiple iterations over the years. Everyone must also be proactive in their identification and response to cyber threats.  What I am describing is the need for a cultural change.

Creating a risk-conscious and security-aware culture is key to protecting an organization’s information infrastructure and data assets, risk management expert John P. Pironti wrote in 2012 ISACA Journal article. Business leaders must begin viewing information security as a benefit, rather than as an obstacle, and employ threat and vulnerability analysis – rather than fear and doubt – to drive adoption of points of view and controls

So let us first focus on changing our IT security culture. That will give us the edge we need in order to prevail over the cyber underworld.  We also must adopt a “trust-but-verify approach to monitoring and oversight of organizational and employee activities”. This would involve the adoption and expansion of automated security control point monitoring and reporting.  This, in fact, is a strength of any well designed and implemented cloud computing platform.

(This post was written as part of the Dell Insight Partners program, which provides news and analysis about the evolving world of tech. To learn more about tech news and analysis visit Tech Page One. Dell sponsored this article, but the opinions are our own and don’t necessarily represent Dell’s positions or strategies.)

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