Professor Ojdana 10/27/12 Information Systems for Managers Monday evening Case Study #8 How Secure is the Cloud? Adrienne Larson

Professor Ojdana 10/27/12

Information Systems for Managers

Monday evening

Case Study #8 How Secure is the Cloud?

Adrienne Larson

1.

What security and control
problems are described in this case?

Cloud services and its security are @ issue. The control problems are @ issue as well because
Cloud computing lacks transparency. It is highly distributed which means you do not always
know exactly where and even in wha
t county your data is being stored.


2.

What people, organizations, and technology

factors contribute to these problems?

The cloud computing providers, the customers themselves, and the power companies that
supply the
electricity

to maintain these systems are

all factors

in the security equation
.


3.

How secure is cloud computing? Explain.

When the right vendor and their security processes are in place it can be relatively secure. A
vendor that is a public c
ompany must comply with laws requiring minimum standard
and
discloser of their security processes. Also using vendors who allow is customers to choose where
their cloud computing is being stored also provides some security.


4.

If you were in charge of your company’
s IS department

what issues would you want to cla
rify
with prospective vendors?

I would want to know if they were a public company, what kind of encrypt software is being
used, can I choose the center were my data would be stored, and if they meet current
compliance requirement.


5.

Would you entrust your
corporate systems to a cloud computing provider? Why or why not?

If my company data storage needs were so huge and it was clear that using this service provided
large economical savings and provided as good if not better security protection than was alread
y
in place, then yes I would use the service. However if the company data was highly
sensitive (like
the federal government top secret intel) then I would not be apt to use this service. I believe
there will never be a %100 secure information system as lon
g as people are alive. Evil exist and
people possess it and are driven by it for self
-
serving needs and will always figure out ways to
crack any system to d
o

damage.