I spent a good part of the last hour following links to stories about security and privacy lapses in Google Docs. I started out with a TechCrunch article detailing additional security loopholes that a security expert had recently uncovered including:
- Embedded images in protected documents that never go away and that get saved to an open server
- The new diagram feature of Google Docs saves all previous versions of the diagram and makes them available to anyone who can read the doc, even if you’ve set the diagram to view only mode
- Sometimes users still can access documents after their permissions have been revoked
These are pretty serious issues for customers who use Google Docs in a true collaborative… Continue reading: The Fog of Cloud Computing
from an upcoming article series by Char Sample,
As noted by many, the phrase “cloud computing” is ambiguous enough to encompass everything (and therefore nothing). I think at the very least we should be discussing the cloud in terms of connections that terminate there. That is, we should think of cloud computing as providing services for either the connection source (e.g. virtual desktop infrastructure) or a connection destination (target servers).
If the service happens in the cloud, but operates on traffic that is just passing through the cloud, I don’t think it should be a part of “cloud computing.” That means that proxies and other inline security functions are not “cloud” proper since the termination points… Continue reading: Just Passing Through the Cloud
