I love it when traditional journalists, not satisfied with telling a story the way it really is, choose an emotive headline in order to sell a few more issues or get a few more page views.
Latest is Robert McMillan over at CIO magazine who proclaimed from on high:
Cloud Computing a ‘security Nightmare,’ Says Cisco CEO
A full reading of the article (does anyone actually do that these days?) showed that John Chambers, Cisco CIO did in fact say that “[cloud computing] is a security nightmare and it can’t be handled in traditional ways.” Which of course is fair enough, no cloud evangelist has ever suggested that a new way of thinking about data can rely on the old ways of thinking about the imperatives of its delivery. Hell, the early electricity utilities never suggested delivering their product by the previously en vogue steam engine belts either.
Chambers is a realist however and he also said that he’s excited to be a network player who is tasked with tying all that hardware together in a robust, secure way.
Chambers went on to tell the audience at the RSA security conference that, despite any concerns he might have about the coming technology shifts, Cisco was already embracing it. He gave the example that in the first quarter of 2009 he’d personally held 262 meetings, a full 200 of which were virtual utilising Cisco’s seriously bling, but seriously cool, TelePresence system.
So yes – security of cloud services demands attention and new ways of thinking, but that nightmare can’t be keeping Chambers up at night too much, judging by the benefit his organisation makes from it.
Luckily for us all someone else from CIO magazine, despite having reservations, puts a much more balanced spin on this all.
