UPDATED 10:29 EDT / JULY 05 2011

Safeguarding the Cloud: Where Does Mobile Go From Here?

With hackers at large, nothing seems to be safe… Not in the cloud, nor the mobile space. At least, this is what the current state suggests, especially when we talk of a cloud where everything happens online.  Cloud migration and booming demand for mobile apps intensify the campaign to build up security arsenals to prevent security breaches, jeopardizing customer’s data and safekeeping of confidential information.

Both platforms are already drawing massive investments, but that also makes them good targets for cyber-attacks. For better digestion of what safeguarding the cloud means, we look at the manyt means of organizations in dealing with cloud and mobile security.

Mobile security: Android vs iOS

A leader in online security, Symantec evaluates the top two mobile platforms in the planet: Android and iOS. Security has already become a major point of contention between these two platforms, making it an important topic of discussion. Here are some highlights of the study, spearheaded by Khoi Nguyen:

“While iOS apps are forbidden to read or write to other apps or the operating system and have limited access to the SIM card or the kernel, they can perform a wide range of actions such as accessing the Internet, getting the phone number, looking at the calendar and controlling the video camera without requesting permission from the user. This can raise potential privacy flags.

“While Android gives the user control over what to allow on a case-by-case basis, it also runs the risk of overwhelming non-technically savvy users by asking them to make security decision.”

And earlier this week, hackers claimed that they slightly penetrated Apple’s system, allegedly stealing a few sets of usernames and passwords. The culprits are belived to have been working closely with the notorious Lulzec, which according to authorities were already disbanded and sanctioned by the law.

The economic influence of apps

In an interview with Simon Crosby and Ian Pratt, former Citrix leader-turned-Bromium founder, noted the correlation of personal devices in the increasing strain over security measures. People are going crazy over apps, a truth that is being taken advantage of by some enterprises.  It’s a booming industry that’s only expected to grow, with estimates of the mobile app economy reaching more than $37 billion in revenue by 2015.

People often see mobile gadgets as the more secure group, versus desktops or laptops. However, their insecurity lies within their goal of mimicking the capabilities of the latter two. One of the growing industry’s biggest concerns is the fact that we are exposing confidential information in the mobile space, which translates to a danger for consumers as well as enterprise networks.  And in the case of all major tablets currently available in the market, IT departments usually do not have control over accessing and stripping these devices.

Mobile and the cloud: a story of security

The cloud, just like the mobile space, has vulnerabilities that are continually being exploited by hackers and cyber criminals.  And the relationship for the mobile cloud must be bonded by security, or else it devalues the underlying system that’s building up today’s mobile app economy.  Just as the web required a security revolution in order to usher in commercial services in finance and other industries, so too will mobile require some proof of consumer trust.

But there seems to be a more affirmative mood in this camp. Growing confidence over cloud security was seen in a recent LA Times article where Evaluserve’s CIO Sachin Jain shares factors that his organization looks at before even implementing cloud-based applications, summing things up quite well.

“We look for technological, physical and logical controls deployed by the vendor to protect the data. Encryption, multifactor authentication and VPN are some of the important technological controls we have to implement on the basis of project requirements.

“Physical security of the location where the cloud infrastructure is hosted has also to be reviewed and verified before taking the decision on the cloud. Understanding of the kind of physical and logical access that the cloud provider will have on our data is also important.”

The trend around cloud adoption is moving at an incredible pace and with this development, security becomes a big factor. HP Cloud Expert Archie Reed had a brief discussion about the cloud and security providing knowledge from the trenches in a video seen in SiliconAngle.tv.


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