Cloud computing a ‘superhighway for cyber crime’ | San Francisco Business Times

This seems to be a case of a catchy headline that has little to do with the content of the story and an interesting fashion in journalism driven by the need to grab eyeballs on the web. This was the style for tabloids in supermarket checkout lanes for the same ends but seems to have found a new home in online news publications. Huffington Post comes immediately to mind as a primary culprit.

What are listed are ten areas of concern for potential attack most of which are tied to social media, smart phone, USB devices and tablets, and the continuing evolution of phishing and botnet exploits on the web in general. This is another inevitable bit of confusion in defining or failing to define"Cloud Computing". The Cloud, of course, is simple shorthand for the Internet. In that sense these are cloud related threats as they all exist on the Internet. But the term Cloud Computing is obviously no longer just another term for the Internet (why use two words when one will do). People increasingly understand this to mean the use of the Internet for processing your own information (running programs) and/or storing your information on line. A careful look at the above article then produces only two of the ten items that are Cloud Computing related. These are:

8. Cloud computing concerns. As more data is distributed around the Internet in the so-called “cloud,” opportunities for data infection or theft will grow.
9. Data exfiltration and insider threats. People will always find ways to anonymously leak private information. . . .

Obviously I'm being generous in including 9 as it predates the Internet by a long way. Insider access is the basis for the vast majority of data loss, data destruction, and the creation of "back doors" to allow botnet or other attacks. Number 8 seems to be the old warning that if you don't want the wrong people to have your data then don't give it to anyone. So there.

So what are the real threats of Cloud Computing and how do Cloud Computing providers (of which we are one) assist you in addressing the evolving threats to your data? To answer this question requires some defining of Cloud Computing. There are two major forms of Cloud Computing: 1) Software as a Service providing the programs that you use to work with your information from an online provider and 2) Infrastructure as a Service which provides the computing power online with which you can run programs and store your information. The first is what most people think of when they hear the term Cloud Computing and the second is what most businesses actually use for Cloud Computing. Of course there is a good bit of overlap possible in these categories but understanding that is very important to understanding how to keep your data clean, safe and only available to those who you wish to access to your data.

To put it in clearer terms SaaS (Software as a Service) is using the Internet in general as your computer and letting others provide the functionality and storage that you need without any regard to location. Facebook is really the face (ok, I couldn't help it) of SaaS for most people. Facebook controls the information you give them and allows you to do different things with your information and your list of friends. In exchange you have no idea where your data is stored or who may have access to it. SaaS providers are constantly updating and redefining their privacy and data security terms to try to make you comfortable with their care of your information. There is a clear problem with this, however, because they want to use your data and they want you to use their functionality in more and more ways. They can extract secondary information from how you use your own and other peoples data which they can use to make money. That's a whole other story. The point is that your data is anywhere and everywhere and you are not paying attention to where or how they are processing your information. Obviously businesses limit their use of social media to marketing, sales, and public relations or if they don't they should.

Infrastructure as a Service provides computer and storage resources dedicated to the user. This is much closer to the traditional way that we purchased and used computers from the beginning of the Information Age. IaaS simply eliminates the physical boxes and creates virtual computers and drives for storage  in a data center that you control through the Internet. This has much greater potential security because you are controlling not just your information but the computer processing resources that work on your information. With Islanda (small plug) you actually get to know exactly where your data and computer resources are housed. With large national companies such as Amazon or Rackspace you don't get that information and control. With SaaS you are handing your data out to the Internet for someone to provide processing and storage of that data where they please. With IaaS you are dealing with the processing power and storage itself and you control the software that you use to process your information. When thought about this way the difference in potential security problems is much clearer.

It would have been nice if an article titled "Cloud computing a 'superhighway for cyber crime'" actually said something about cyber crime and Cloud Computing but it didn't even define the terms. I will pick this up again in a future post on how Cloud Computing greatly improves your security and ability to avoid problems. Let me know if you have specific questions about security and Cloud Computing.

You can always reach me at the email above to talk about any of these things.

Expanded Capacity and New Services

Welcome to the 4^th quarter 2010 edition of Islanda Cloud news for updates on Cloud Computing in general, expanded capacity and scheduled changes and new services.

October marked two years of Islanda Cloud services. We are pleased to be the First VMware Service Provider Partner in Hawaii with complete IT infrastructure in the public cloud. Islanda now operates with double the capacity of our first year. This is based on growth in the most difficult economy in over seventy years. It helps that the future is Virtual Data Centers and Managed Cloud Services and more of Hawaii’s businesses and organizations are taking advantage of the economy, efficiency, and security that Islanda Cloud Computing provides.

What does expanded capacity mean for current customers?

Our growth is important not just for the addition of new clients but for improved performance and reliability for all of partner clients. And we view all of our clients as partners as this is a long term alliance that gives you the flexibility to expand your data processing needs with no large capital costs and the full support of an enterprise class IT department.

In the last two years of growth we have been constantly learning more about the best ways to deliver cloud computing services. We now have a very clear understanding of server and storage capacity to ensure complete reliability. We are now adding two servers at a time to our VMware ESX server clusters and completed the last addition in October which gives us capacity to add several important new services.

New services coming in November

VMware vCloud Director – This provides a range of resource pooling, security and management services which will allow Islanda to bring web portal controls to our Cloud Clients. This will allow you to control your own virtual machines and to self-provision new machines as you need them from a catalogue of virtual resources that we maintain for your company or organization. For our larger clients we will be able provide custom catalogues of services that employees from that organization can tap as they need them. These resources will be billed as they are used for true ‘on demand’ Cloud Computing.

VMware View 4.5 – We will begin offering upgrades to View 4.5 for our Cloud Desktop users in the second week of November. The newest Islanda Cloud Desktop (VDI or Virtual Desktop Infrastructure is the formal term) will radically change the nature of virtual desktops. Enhanced performance is important and complete support for Windows 7 is also but the most exciting addition is the ability to check out your desktop and use it without an Internet connection. On reconnecting to the Internet your desktop synchronizes with your Cloud system. You can have full use of your desktop as you travel to locations without Internet access. This feature also allows utilization of contract employees working from home and really facilitates mobile workers traveling to customer sites. Check out the link to the VMware site and let us know what you think of our new services. We will update you on scheduled rollout.

Expanded Technical Support

We are pleased to announce expansion of our technical support staff as we continue to expand our services. This will primarily affect our new client installations but you may meet new technical staff if you contact our Helpdesk in the coming months. We are phasing people in through the end of 2010 and will give you move information at the beginning of 2011.

Islanda Cloud is the future of both public and private cloud computing in Hawaii. We are preparing for increasing growth as our economy improves through the end of 2010 and into 2011.

Cloud Computing and Social Networking

October marks the second anniversary of Islanda Cloud virtual servers. We have been running VMware hypervisors since October of 2008. As with all technology in the Internet age the movement to virtualization of information technology has been explosive and the growing public awareness of Cloud services is indicative of that momentum. While the growth of our specific area of Cloud Computing is what we live on the general growth of Internet processing services represents a profound transformation of how society and business works. We are seeing only the beginning effects of this as social and business structure begins to shift in response to the new information processing dynamic. This dynamic is shaping the demand for new services and new products to deliver those services. We are just beginning to see the overall outline of how human social institutions and the way we deal with information is changing. But what does this mean for business?

The meaning of this for business can be seen in the implications of two very different areas of change: Social networking and Cloud Computing (the Islanda local/regional model). Social networking is everywhere but primarily tied to the first generation coming of age in the 21^st century. All businesses are moving to tweet and to maintain Facebook pages and trying to link these things to their web sites to generate buzz. But what does that have to do with using subscription virtual servers and desktops? These are linked by trust and defined by community.

Social networks seem to be about pointless and endless information. After all who really cares about what you had for breakfast or what your cat did last night? And this is one of the reasons businesses are struggling with the social networks as advertising media. But these networks are really about communities of trust that begin to help us filter the tremendous deluge of information that the web represents. We all chose our social networks and within them chose our “friends” who we “follow”. Our personal network then feeds us constant information that we give some level of trust. By tracking trends and topics in our select networks we can selectively explore out to find information in vast oceans of information. This appears to be the emerging form of virtual community as trusted information source. An important aspect of this is the steady rise of individual voices replacing faceless organizations. We trust people we know more than organizations.

But what about Cloud Computing? That too is a movement of trust driven by the real benefits of cost and efficiency but based in building a business community with your online provider of computer processing services. We have to be a trusted part of your business family and your business community. It is not the old style contractor services or suppliers channel but a much more personal and dynamic networking relationship. In the larger context we are discovering a new way to build communities of trust in society and business also.

For further reading see I Live in the Future & Here's How It Works by Nick Bilton.

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VMware Reveals vCloud Director 1.0 - Cloud Computing from eWeek

VMware Reveals vCloud Director 1.0 - Cloud Computing from eWeek

This will allow us and other VMware Service Providers to fully automate our Virtual Data Centers. Even our smaller customers will be able to self manage their IT infrastructure. We will be working with larger clients to design virtual appliances that can simplify their operation. This should be of significant value to retail chains and sales organizations.

Watch for updates on this as we bring these services online in the coming months.

IT Flexibility and Disaster Recovery for Hawaii Businesses

According to a Forrester Consulting paper on virtualization 50% of small and medium businesses (SMBs)in North America have deployed virtualization and another 24% will do so in 2010. While both CAPEX and operating cost reduction with computer system integration were primary drivers 53% of the medium size businesses were also looking at improving manageability, Disaster Recovery and flexibility as very important. This is a change that is, as usual, a bit slow in coming to the Hawaii business community. The Forrester paper gives the following reasons for the rising importance of disaster recovery and flexibility for SMBs. It is because SMBs:

• Have less and less tolerance for downtime. With businesses increasingly operating 24x7 or globally in highly competitive environments, downtime doesn’t just represent lost revenue but lost customer confidence and market share. The challenge for SMBs, however, is that although they can’t afford lengthy outages, neither can they afford high availability solutions such as fault tolerant servers or clustering in a physical environment. In a virtual environment, the ability to rapidly restart a VM or non-disruptively move a VM to an alternate virtual host can improve recovery time from hours and even days to minutes. Suddenly, SMBs have enterprise-class capabilities at significantly lower costs.
• Recognize that DR preparedness is no longer optional. As individuals become savvier about the potential and impact of a data center or site failure, senior business and IT executives as well as strategic partners and customers demand recovery time and recovery point capabilities that can be measured in hours, not days. Historically, the investment in an alternate site, redundant infrastructure, replication licenses, and bandwidth between sites was too great for SMBs — especially if the site were to remain idle waiting for a disaster. Virtualization addresses some of those challenges: 1) it can reduce the necessary investment in server hardware and the alternate site, and 2) it can help organizations move toward more active-active site configurations.
• Realize that flexibility is critical to IT and business alignment. It’s a constant complaint in most businesses that IT can’t provision new systems or roll out new services fast enough or that IT can’t respond to changes in demand whether it’s a spike in traffic from the launch of a new product or service, a new sales campaign or seasonal sales activity. A lot of the reason IT seems slow is that it can’t afford to simply deploy or scale the application without knowing they can protect it and recover it. With virtualization, IT organizations can now roll out new VMs in minutes and immediately put them under the protection of fast restart or live migration.

The reality is that IT management can no longer be a side issue or an afterthought for even small businesses. Islanda Cloud Computing can move your business from the slow lane to the express lane on the road to business resiliency with fully managed, enterprise level IT virtualization. The goal is change management and the ability to efficiently and easily align all critical IT requirements to both business needs and business continuity. That is the real definition of resiliency.

You don’t need to be an IT expert or an acting CIO. Islanda can create your Virtual Data Center with everything defined in the Forrester outline above and assist you in defining your IT infrastructure to your business process and goals. IT and business resiliency is only a phone call away for any Hawaii business.

Call 808.839.1200 Option 2 or EMAIL for more information on immediate virtualization.

History of the Internet - Visual

This is a very interesting history done visually:


Via: MBA Online

Climate Change and the Integrity of Science

climate_statement.pdf (application/pdf Object)

WE ARE DEEPLY DISTURBED BY THE RECENT ESCALATION OF POLITICAL ASSAULTS ON SCIENTISTS in general and on climate scientists in particular. All citizens should understand some basic scientifi
c facts. There is always some uncertainty associated with scientific conclusions; science
never absolutely proves anything.

An excellent letter from 255 concerned scientists on the incredible level of hysterical ignorance about science and climate change. Well worth the read . . .