Cloudy Future - What Each Person Should Know

The cloud computing era is coming, and with it people are learning of its advantages as well as its weaknesses.  Sony was only the tip of the iceberg, when we take into account the global nature of the Internet, it becomes easy to spoof and trick the vulnerable into giving up their private information.  The article I have linked to also explains how reusing passwords is a serious no-no, as is exposing any private information that could hint to security question information and password resets.

When we hear of people falling prey to hackers, it isn't because they had to go through hoops and incredible feats.  It's almost always because of poor security habits ("password" is still used for a password!) and people's failure to understand just what can be done with a little data.

"Rogue cloud service providers based in countries with lax cybercrime laws can provide confidential hosting and data storage services," he said.

"[This] facilitates the storage and distribution of criminal data, avoiding detection by law enforcement agencies."

An easy parallel to draw is with the way Swiss bank accounts were rumoured to operate in the past.

While bank customers were offered the utmost of discretion with their financial transactions, that same courtesy could now be offered to those wishing to de-encrypt sensitive data.

It doesn't take a genius to see where this is going.  The real question is, what path are we going to take to a safe and private computing network?  If some people refuse to take accountability and push their safety onto others, that will lead to a heavily governed cloud environment.  It doesn't have to be this way, if only some folks would learn some basic safety measures.  Dear Lord, there are still people falling for the Nigerian bank account scam.  Perhaps the Clue Fairy will pay them a visit.