Beyond Dropbox: Security is only part of the cloud's problem

Cloud computing = security breaches + data theft/loss + service disruptions...choose your vendors wisely!

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A bit discouraging for CUs seeking data management solutions. Yet this is the message we keep hearing over and over; it's no wonder that there are still a lot of businesses that aren't about to just dump their precious data into the cyber snake pit also known as the Cloud. The potential security breach that's now got cloud storage provider Dropbox in the hot seat again with its 50 million users is merely another addition to the never-ending list of wakeup calls about how precarious an environment the Cloud can be.

As this article points out, nailing down proper security is only half the battle. The other part of the equation for a safe cloud environment is availability. Cloud collaboration service provider ftopia's usage of Amazon S3 cloud infrastructure, for instance, mirrors data across multiple physical locations - critical for cloud storage, as it backs up the data and ensures that the service is always up and running.

On the security front, extra points go to ftopia for its self-validating data integrity feature powered by Guardtime which enables users to determine whether data has been compromised - something to think about in light of Dropbox's current situation.

Know what you're signing up for before you give up your data. Read networking technology analyst Dave Greenfield's take on reaching a higher level of confidence in cloud computing.