The dark side of cloud computing
Adam Koslin
Issue date: 4/29/10 Section: Sci/Tech
Over the past year or so, a new trend has begun setting the collective imagination of the technorati aflame-cloud computing. Think to yourself of all the things you do and information and media you have stored on your laptop's hard-drive. Now imagine if all of that, instead, was stored in a personal account somewhere on the internet.
Your documents? Written in GoogleDocs and saved to your Gmail account. Your music? Stored in a Rhapsody.com or Lala.com server. Presentation for work? Instead of constantly emailing distinct versions of a document back and forth between team members, just host a single, online editing and discussion session over Google Wave, where everyone can go over the same document in real-time.
At it's core, cloud computing would get rid of the "personal" in personal computer, instead relying on the collaborative, connective, communal computing power of the world-wide web.
In some ways, this is a wonderful idea. Increasing the ease with which people can share ideas and work together has always been one of the greatest aspects of the internet, and cloud computing certainly facilitates this.
It also cuts back on costs for the average consumer, because in a cloud, high-powered computers and large suites of proprietary softwares are no-longer necessary, because, after all, even things as low-powered (computationally) as cellphones can connect to the internet, and once you're there, it's relatively easy to find open source (read: free) software suites that can meet your requirements.
But there are also downsides to this concept. When personal data are stored online, they are safe from the catastrophic failure of a single computer-they can be accessed from anywhere, so long as the right credentials are presented upon login.
However, that same accessibility raises large numbers of security issues. Today it's relatively common for large organizations to have their personnel files hacked into, and as anyone who's seen a Lifelock commercial knows, online identity theft is a major problem.
Your documents? Written in GoogleDocs and saved to your Gmail account. Your music? Stored in a Rhapsody.com or Lala.com server. Presentation for work? Instead of constantly emailing distinct versions of a document back and forth between team members, just host a single, online editing and discussion session over Google Wave, where everyone can go over the same document in real-time.
At it's core, cloud computing would get rid of the "personal" in personal computer, instead relying on the collaborative, connective, communal computing power of the world-wide web.
In some ways, this is a wonderful idea. Increasing the ease with which people can share ideas and work together has always been one of the greatest aspects of the internet, and cloud computing certainly facilitates this.
It also cuts back on costs for the average consumer, because in a cloud, high-powered computers and large suites of proprietary softwares are no-longer necessary, because, after all, even things as low-powered (computationally) as cellphones can connect to the internet, and once you're there, it's relatively easy to find open source (read: free) software suites that can meet your requirements.
But there are also downsides to this concept. When personal data are stored online, they are safe from the catastrophic failure of a single computer-they can be accessed from anywhere, so long as the right credentials are presented upon login.
However, that same accessibility raises large numbers of security issues. Today it's relatively common for large organizations to have their personnel files hacked into, and as anyone who's seen a Lifelock commercial knows, online identity theft is a major problem.
Viewing Comments 1 - 1 of 1
Joe Onisick
posted 4/29/10 @ 11:01 AM EST
Yahoo should be commended for maintaining the privacy of the soldiers email. Email is a private thing, and having family or friends digging through it after the soldiers death is not a good thing. (Continued…)
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