IBM's Ban on Dropbox and iCloud Highlights Cloud Security Issues

IBM has forbidden its employees from using cloud-based services such as Siri, Dropbox and iCloud, according to reports. These products (along with many others) are presenting a challenge to IT administrators who want to keep their organizations secure, as well as to consumer-software developers who suddenly need to build features with both consumers and businesses in mind.

Comments

Self-Serving?

[Marillion]

While I'm not discounting the security concerns, we should also recognize that this is self-serving to IBM because it sells IT security consulting services.

Re:Self-Serving?

[NeutronCowboy]

Yes, of course. At the same time, what would have them do? Not ever mention anything about potential security holes, because it could be construed as a conflict interest?

Here's the real question you need to ask yourself before putting anything in the cloud: do you trust them to be more competent than yourself at backing things up, providing uptime and securing the data? If you answer no to any of these questions, you have a reason to keep stuff in-house. Note: beware of Dunning-Kruger effect. If you answer yes to all three, you have no reason to keep things in-house.

What IBM has done is to say that they can do a better job securing their data than Dropbox and iCloud. Considering the rather significant breaches that have occurred at Dropbox, and the completely unknown state of data security in iCloud, IBM is spot on with their assessment. I would only put encrypted stuff on either, or stuff where I have no problem if people are snooping through it. Want to take a gander at my weekend pictures? Knock yourself out. Want to find out what my truecrypt file is about? Good luck with that.

Re:Self-Serving?

[Anonymous Coward]

I have a better question to ask. Am I paying for this or is it free and what do I expect of a free services. If I am paying for it what am I paying for? Convenience or Security, if I am paying for convenience its going to cost a lot less than if I am paying for a top secure cloud experience. If I going to put something on the cloud is it encrypted already as it should be and why am I putting important information on the cloud and not on my own companies backup server which should be how its done.

I see IBM looking to bring out a high level expensive cloud service soon for their employees and for sale to corporations which is not what most cloud based services are in the business of doing right now.

Unrealistic

[Anonymous Coward]

We have a similar ban in my company (Alcatel-Lucent). Of course, I can carry out gigabytes of information on a thumb drive or the laptop I take home every night, but while I'm at work I can't connect to DropBox. I hope IBM also jams cell signals because all someone has to do is plug an LTE dongle into their laptop and they are outside the corporate firewall. This is the Maginot Line of security.

Ban the cloud?

[tverbeek]

Since someone suggested Dropbox as a good place to put our disaster recovery documentation, my employer has started "raising questions" about it from a data-security perspective. After years of buying computers without floppies or optical drives, and locking down USB ports, he wonders if we ought to start blocking these services as well. He argues that with our corporate e-mail we at least have a record of it (and a chance to block it) if someone sends confidential information off-site, but not so with cloud storage. Personally, I think it's impossible to effectively secure against this without crippling legitimate business-related web access. I can think of several trivial ways to get information from a computer on our network to an outside host using just innocuous must-allow protocols, and without needing to install software on the secured machine... starting with any webmail or forum site that allows uploads of file attachments, to them newfangled "cloud drives", to setting up an FTP server that listens on port 80.