Those companies weren't alone. Of nearly 500 information-technology professionals Intel recently surveyed, 46 percent said their firms had suffered a security breach -- meaning their data was lost or accessed by unauthorized means. And most of the victims said they were experiencing more breaches than when they had kept the data on their own networks.
Claiming responsibility
Some information placed in the cloud can get into the wrong hands because of equipment mishaps or employee foul-ups. "But hackers are among the biggest concerns, and many businesses mistakenly assume their cloud providers will keep the crooks at bay, said JD Sherry of the security firm Trend Micro. While offering some protections, he said, the providers often leave security largely to their customers."That burden of responsibility typically falls upon the customer and that often can be a huge challenge for a lot of folks," he said.
Amazon provides a wide array of security measures for its cloud services, according to a company statement. But it said a customer of those services "assumes responsibility and management of the guest operating system (including updates and security patches), other associated application software, as well as the configuration of the (Amazon)-provided security group firewall."
Planning for the inevitable
[According to] Eve Maler, a Forrester Research principal analyst, said even a social media site break-in can cause havoc.
"The bad guys might see direct messages containing personal information meant for the company, or could send out messages that harm the company's brand or business," she said.
Breaches of corporate financial data and trade secrets could be far more serious, and cloud-based companies will have to become quicker at responding to cyber attacks, said Art Gilliland, general manger of enterprise security products at Hewlett-Packard. Even so, he predicted more companies will be victimized as they shift their data into the ether.
"It's going to happen," he said. "It's inevitable."
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