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Ask Slashdot: Is Your Data Safe In the Cloud?
With so much personal data being kept on the cloud, including government and health records or your source code, do you have any concerns about it falling into the wrong hands? Do you think the cloud's benefits are outweighed by continuing security issues?
I believe that government seizure/examination of cloud data is even a bigger threat than hacking. With a court order or -- as we have seen in the past few years -- even without a court order, a trustworthy cloud operator could be forced to turn over our data. The article a few days ago about foreign governments being reluctant to sign onto cloud computing with an American company because of the potential for snooping into their data illustrates the point even further.
"Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past." -- George Orwell
And what's a cloud, really?
not a bit
No one is going to care as much about your data as you do. Next question please.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
In many cases maybe your data is even more secure in a cloud than on your own servers, especially if you choose your 'cloud' carefully (outside of your country/jurisdiction).
The real threats to your data are your own employees and your government. The outside 'hackers' come as a very distant third.
You can't handle the truth.
then store it to the cloud w/ you just knowing the keys/passphrases
It's still someone else's servers holding my data and I still have to go through some hoop(s) to get at it from other devices. What is so special about it?
Now this story shows that the hosting company's can get mix up and do you want to take that risk with your data??
http://thedailywtf.com/Articles/Remotely-Incompetent.aspx
::rimshot::
No, seriously - depending on the cloud service, aren't buckets of data encrypted in such a way that only the owner of the data can access them? Cloud service providers may be required to hand over data, but do they have the means of handing over the encryption keys along with it?
For certain cloud services where you're uploading via browser, they may be encrypting your data post-upload, so the request to decrypt may be more trivial. However, if you manage your own (like S3 backups) - or simply use a service that encrypts BEFORE uploading, I'm not sure there's a whole lot Amazon or some other provider could do to hand over the data in any usable form.
Those who are concerned about security of their data should ensure that the backup is encrypted in an acceptable method, or simply stash it in an encrypted container before storing it "online" (I realize there may be limitations of scale with that suggestion).
$ man woman *
-bash:
...that the first outing of the sponsored Ask Slashdot is a Geeknet company.
Yes. I'm called the guinea pig.
Apache guy, Open Source enthusiast, runner
Unlike all other Ask Slashdots, this question is not prededed by "$USERNAME writes", so who actually proposed this question? A user that didn't get credit? A Slashdot editor? Someone from Sourceforge? The post introducing sponsored Ask Slashdots says that "the sponsors don't pick the questions", but that's still ambiguous. Many people are skeptical about this being thinly veiled astroturfing, so it's important to be as transparent as possible.
I would encrypt any sensitive data I may have before storing it in the "cloud". It would be irresponsible to assume the data can not be read or copied by others.
Note to slashdot: It'll be hard to maintain whatever shred of journalistic veneer and integrity you have left if you start posting advertisements for sister websites as 'sponsorships' of semi-legitimate discussions or stories.
The fact that everyone else does it is still no excuse.
Looking good so far. It'll be interesting to see what kind of posts actual sponsors make when we get there.
It's better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don't want and get it.
- E. Debs
It's a marketing term for a hard drive in a different building from the one you are currently in.
I used to be a security "expert" (at least according to my business card), but that was long enough ago, and things have changed sufficiently since then, that I no longer make that claim. However, back then, most of our customers happened to be in healthcare in some form or another, and I was appalled, on a daily basis, how insecure their data was. Any high school kid with some tools could completely own their network servers with very little effort. We hired one of those high school kids, and he frequently did.
Furthermore, with a little sweet talking, or looking under keyboards, we got access to all the stuff that he didn't. Granted, this was in the days immediately before HIPAA, and in the first days after HIPAA when people were trying to figure out how to implement the requirements. I naively hope that HIPAA has corrected some of the most glaring of these problems.
It's hard to imagine that putting data "in the cloud", whatever that happens to mean in the particular case under discussion, could be any less secure than where they're already storing your data.
Apache guy, Open Source enthusiast, runner
These days your data is your wealth. Putting it somewhere as vague as 'the cloud' is as dumb as keeping your life savings in a car belonging to someone you don't know and have no idea where that car might be located. (Probably in some trailer court.)
It's a marketing trap - don't fall for it.
No.
I use cloud storage for a good deal of our small business data. The question is do the people who work at the place my data is stored at do a better job than I would protecting that data? probably. Am I worried about about most of that data being obtained by a hacker? No. 70% of it is actually public record, and the other 30% is really boring financial stuff. Could someone steal my identity if they got this information? Most likely. if this happens, have fun blackhat; the IRS is after you, and so is the (local) state employment security department! (also you may have a bench warrant) have fun.
Well, we were pissed about the experts not being expert enough -- so here goes nothing -
What does Source Forge do that is above and beyond the call of duty to protect user information? Have you guys had any data breaches that you haven't disclosed, or fully disclosed? What would you have done differently in hindsight?
moox. for a new generation.
Servers "in the cloud" are installed, secured, and maintained, by sysadmins like you and me. Some of those sysadmins are good at what they do, and some of them aren't.
I don't get it then, what makes the sysadmins and employees at these companies that run "the cloud" any more or less secure than my own employees and sysadmins? And what makes the government where "the cloud" resides any more respectable of my privacy than my local government? My own reaction is that there's just another layer of security risk here. At least if they're my employees or sysadmins and I find out data is being leaked, I can fire them and do an internal investigation. If some sysadmin is dumping databases at a "cloud" site, then who is ever going to know and how is that ever going to be rectified?
I'm not arguing against "the cloud" and I don't have a good example on hand of where "the cloud" has failed but to me it seems like a lot of these are virtual machines sitting on physical hardware running more software. And every layer is just another potential weak point in the chain of software. Is that not true? Isn't it possible that employees of VM farms are simply cloning and dumping memory or hard disks (or entire VMs for that matter) for their own personal use?
There was a paper a while back about encrypted computing just to address this very fear.
"The cloud" is not intrinsically secure or insecure, because "the cloud" is not a definable entity, as much as the tech press wants it to be. This is a misnomer perpetrated by the poorly-informed press, and not really something that's based in reality.
Just like the title to this Ask Slashdot encourages us to debate the security of something that cannot be intrinsically secure or insecure? If you're telling me that "the cloud" is not intrinsically secure or insecure why are we having this conversation? I mean, I think it's worthwhile to consider what a lot of "the cloud" services are that are out there (the big few that exist) and to debate their security success or potential holes. You can always deflect my arguments by saying that they're just "implementing the cloud wrong" and we won't go anywhere. But it is my opinion that sensitive, personal and secure information should not be handed off to yet another third part for computation or storage unless your trust with them is enough to risk litigation against yourself from all of your customers.
My work here is dung.
I am a lawyer, and the thought of trusting my data to the cloud makes me very nervous for several reasons.
1. Government access. If you trust the government to keep its hands off of your securely stored data, you are living in the 1960s. Federal and (most) state governments are too tempted by the possibility of using your data for good purposes to actually keep their hands off it. Employees (like the FBI) will peek at it, especially if you're famous. They will run "searches" to see "what comes up" and get a feel for whether the government needs to do something. Data should never be stored -with- the government, and government should be expressly forbidden from getting access to it after it is generated. They should be required to give you notice each time that they access your data and describe to you what they are looking for in it when they inevitably -do- access it.
2. Outside threats. I'm thrilled every time I read about botnet attacks and Anonymous hacks that get into some individual's or company's private data. (Sarcastically...) "Yes, I believe that my externally stored data is safe from outside intrusion and will not be stolen by criminals." No, I don't believe that. There is no routine requirement for encryption in business environments. If there isn't a robust, national / industry-wide data encryption plan that makes it easy for the end-user (the person whose data it -is-) to protect and access the data, I think that the cloud is too risky for storing really important information, rather than just having my music collection stored in iCloud or Amazon's service.
Also, email security, to me, seems to be a joke. Here, I don't worry about breakins to get at my information, although that has happened at many email providers. Rather, I worry about internal inspection of my information. I use Gmail, but I don't believe for a minute that Google, (or Facebook, which I don't use) doesn't sometimes run statistical analysis of the email stream or the google search bar terms I use to learn more about me. It's their business to know more about me so that they can make money advertising to me. You can be sure that they test their AdSense algorithm improvements on my data to enhance the chances that I'll click on an ad and make them a few per thousand clicks.
I will use the cloud as a backup with services like MozyPro, but only if I can have assurance that my information (my clients' information, really) is locked down tight. To my mind, "ease of access" from storing information in the cloud equates all too readily to "ease of theft" where the thieves don't even have to leave their desks in Mountain View or Moscow to "reach out and touch someone" (apologies, ATT). I much prefer to make the thieves go to all the bother of getting up and coming to my house or office to steal my data.
Carbon_Tet
Excellent,
I was told by a very powerful source that the only way to protect my data was via a contract for my soul. Among the things needed for the incantation a guinea pig was cited.
Look at Paragraph 367 Subsection 32... "Satan will personally hover over your data with an army of undead ghouls.^3214"
I'm still trying to find foot note three thousand two hundred fourteen.
These deals with the devil are almost as bad as FCC mandates.
"You should always go to other people's funerals; otherwise, they won't come to yours." -- Yogi Berra
Is Your Data Safe In the Cloud?
No. Next story.
We used to have cloud computing in the mainframe days: IBM ran a data center somewhere, and you connected to it via a leased line. The only way you knew its location was from the size of your phone bill (;-))
Joking aside, cloud computing really is just a buzzword change. Like any other outsourcing effort, you are at the mercy of the vendor and the government of the country they're in. Chose your suppliers based on the SLA they'll offer you, and the country of the candidate suppliers based on the rights they honor.
--dave
davecb@spamcop.net
I would like to believe that when I host a server at Slicehost (oh, yeah, it's Rackspace now) that they have server administrators who are better trained than I am. That they have backup procedures that are better executed than I would do. That they upgrade their hardware more often than I do.
Likewise, if I put my data on a "cloud" service, I am paying for the assurance that they have secured those servers at least as well as I would, in addition to whatever it is that they specialize in (scalability, availability, redundancy, etc). So, in theory at least, that's what's special about it - that they can do a better job at those things, for less money, than I can.
The reality can be less clear cut, and so, as with any vendor selection process, you have to do your homework and find the ones that seem to do a good job.
I think the press has done us all a disservice by making the cloud into, as you say, a mysterious relic with mystical powers. Hopefully those of us actually making these decisions understand what it really means and can be sober about evaluating options.
Apache guy, Open Source enthusiast, runner
What does Source Forge do that is above and beyond the call of duty to protect user information? Have you guys had any data breaches that you haven't disclosed, or fully disclosed? What would you have done differently in hindsight?
When we have attacks, and compromises (which has happened in the the past) we report in detail on it in the blog. Here's one example: https://sourceforge.net/blog/update-sourceforgenet-attack/
As with any company, these sorts of things have a procedure that we have to follow, and I'm checking with the people along that trail to see what I should say in response. There haven't been any compromises or attacks during my time at SF, so I don't have any personal experience as to how we respond to this, but I've asked some of the guys on our engineering team to help me put together a response to this question.
Apache guy, Open Source enthusiast, runner
"Data" is plural in Latin, but in common English usage, "data" has become a mass noun. One says not "two data" but "two points of data". If you insist on inflecting the verb to match the Latin plural, do you plan to say "datôrum" for "of the data" and "datîs" for "from the data" or "to the data"? Or do you use "data" to mean gifts? Of course not; that'd be the etymological fallacy.
...so that we could remove ourselves from the cloud. Years ago when I started my career, I was a mainframe programmer. We operated through terminals that sent commands to the central mainframe. It was constraining and the machine high priests prevented individuals from being productive. Then the Apple II came out and we got a few of them past IT. Then the PC with dBase and Lotus 123. The Apple Laserwriter is what pushed the tipping point as then everyone became a publisher. We were freed from the tyranny of the controlled server. I laugh because here we are 30 years later and we are being sold that the cloud is freedom. Yes, freedom for the company to mine your data and market you. What does the individual get out of the cloud? If your network goes down, no cloud. The cloud is a stupid idea foisted and fostered by a generation too young to remember the old cloud. No thanks, I'll keep my personal data on my laptop.
As I posted here: http://ask.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2563666&cid=38303250 - I've seen servers at hospitals, local governments, and various other supposedly-secure places (fire stations, airports, etc) in my years as a network security auditor. And I frequently peek under the keyboards in doctors' offices while I'm waiting for them. It's hard to imagine that storing data on someone else's server instead of their own is going to make any substantive difference in their data security posture.
Apache guy, Open Source enthusiast, runner
Ars actually just covered this for anybody not in the US - the Patriot Act is a huge barrier that is making it hard for US companies to do business. Nobody in their right mind trusts US cloud providers with their (subject to non US privacy law) data.
-- "So they told me that using the download page to download something was not something they anticipated." - Bill Gates
Between the patriot act and the value of the data itself for mining purposes, no. To argue otherwise is naive.
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
I was recently at a VMware luncheon with a VMware "clould" expert. He was probably the first person from a big could-services type provider that openly admitted the cloud isn't for everyone, and in many cases, it just doesn't make sense. He went on to explain that it's VMware position that you deploy your own "private cloud" at your own pace, and whether or not you move to public cloud is entirely up to you. Their whole sell was that their products make the transition from private to public cloud easy, hence you can stay private or move public at your own pace.
This contrasts to some recent Microsoft events I've attended, where they were pushing Azure so freakin hard that one of the Microsoft guys was almost literally said, quote for quote, 'if your next SQL project isn't on Azure, you're making a BIG mistake'. Microsoft seems to be of the mindset that between Azure and Office365, it's a hole-in-one business case for every company on the planet, which it's not. They went on to sell their Intune service the same way - 'If you're not a big company that has your own SCOM/SCCM solution, then you're making a mistake if you don't use Intune'.
Bottom line, much more cloud snobbery from the Microsoft guys.
Not to tell y'all how to run your campaigns, but as a humble suggestion, wouldn't it increase your legitimacy if you paid some nice money to someone with a low UID, say 3 digits or less, to help out?
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
I've long thought that government software should be software of the people, by the people, for the people (to be a little over-poetic). If I pay for the development of software that's used to run, say, the TSA, then I should have access to that code. And if the IRS is using software to store my data, I should have access to that code so that I can verify that it's secure, and is calculating my tax refund correctly.
I'm not sure, as a non-lawyer who has never worked as a government contractor, whether such demands are at all realistic or probable, but I still think it's worth making the demands. While I'm confident that *my* congress critter didn't understand the letter I sent him on the subject (at least, based on his content-free response), I would encourage you to contact yours, and maybe there's one out there that would understand.
The medical data issue is a little less clear-cut, depending on whether medecine is socialized in your particular country.
Putting medical data in a shared data pool *promises* big things, certainly.
Every time I go to a doctor's office and have to fill out all the same data, yet again, or when I have to fill out yet another government form with all the same information that they already have, often two or three times on the same set of forms, I think, why, in 2011, do I have to fill out these forms at all, when they already have so much information on me that should be readily accessible? A retinal scan, or even an ID number, should be sufficient to avoid this. Why haven't we solved this problem yet? (Yes, that's a very naive position, largely inspired by the frustration of filling out the 8th form while other peoples' kids run around screaming and sneezing on me.)
But who do we trust to be that central repository of data, and not sell it to the highest bidder?
Apache guy, Open Source enthusiast, runner
I'm more concerned about what my ISP is going to say when I start uploading data by the gig on a regular basis.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
While I wasn't too thrilled about this whole sponsored post idea, I shrugged my shoulders and moved on. However, this first go at it is somewhat troubling. The question is rather ambiguous, with no information given about who submitted the question, but that's already been discussed.
My big problem with it is why this story seems to be 'floating' in the feed. All morning, it's been at the number two position. I don't really mind the glaring blue story staring at me, but I would appreciate it if it faded to oblivion just like the rest of the articles/stories/slashvertisements, so I don't have to continue to stare at this giant blue SourceForge logo when I browse the news feed. I had tried to keep an open mind, but this whole thing looks like an attempt to whore out the site for money.
What would you prefer?
Ask Slashdot: Is Google Evil? Sponsored by Microsoft
Ask Slashdot: Is The Kindle Fire Better Than iPad? Sponsored by Amazon
Ask Slashdot: Why Do Charletans Believe The Global Warming Myth? Sponsored by The Republican Party
Ask Slashdot: Is Your Data Safe In Anuses? Sponsored by Goatse
Ask Slashdot: Do You Want To Hear A Personal Message? Sponsored by Jimmy Wales
Yes. I'm called the guinea pig.
Then I advise you to stay far away from Peru.
I can see the fnords!
So even tho I get to check the box that disables advertising, I have to see advertising?
Can /. at least put all the ads (like the sourceforge logo) in the same folder so I can just add an * to adblock?
_ _ _ Go for the eyes Boo! GO FOR THE EYES!
and how do I make it go away!
Here's a little more information from our legal folks:
A: Earlier this year, we went through a pretty robust process to receive our Truste certification which covers privacy, security and safe harbor (our privacy policy is located at ADD LINK). We are continuing to look for ways to improve our security controls and protect user personal information. We did fully disclose an incident early in 2001 and the details and what we did about can be found at: http://sourceforge.net/blog/sourceforge-attack-full-report/
They also recommended that I point you to our corporate privacy policy, here: http://geek.net/privacy-statement
Apache guy, Open Source enthusiast, runner
I saw the story about Sponsored stuff, but the "loudness" shocked me a little.
At least you can Ad-Block the logos. (... for now!)
I'm kinda dreading the eventual push to have every story Sponsored though.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
(our privacy policy is located at ADD LINK).
I think you forgot something, like making the effort to read the marketing material someone handed you before you copied and pasted it.
There used to be a post worth modding 5 points here.