The question of security in a cloud-based infrastructure is provoking a clash of technology titans.
Leading advocates of cloud computing, such as Amazon.com, are finding security to be a major stumbling block. At a recent technology conference, Amazon CTO Werner Vogels made the point that cloud services provide greater security for online businesses than what the businesses could develop in-house.
“Being able to use many of these components out of the cloud-computing world will allow you to create a more secure business than what you could do on your own,” he told the audience at the Supernova Conference in San Francisco.
But at the Gartner Symposium in Orlando, HP CEO Mark Hurd said: “We wouldn’t put anything material in nature outside the firewall.”
According to TechRepublic technology editor Bill Detwiler, “Hurd seemed to imply that HP would be willing to use cloud infrastructure within its firewall, but wouldn’t think of putting sensitive data (such as email or financial systems) in an external cloud.” HP obviously sees public versus private-cloud security as critical because it gets more than 1,000 hacks a day.
To test the broader IT community, TechRepublic in December asked its readers: “Do you trust current security measures enough to place ‘material information’ in a cloud outside your firewall?”
At last count, 90 percent of the respondents said no.
Click here to view some of Vogels’ speech and see TechRepublic’s survey results.