Don’t worry about cloud security, expert says

Security remains the biggest obstacle preventing major businesses from embracing cloud services. However, Charles Babcock of Information Week says such fears are “overblown.”

In particular, Babcock supports multi-tenant, shared cloud computing, which some executives fear has weak security. “To me, Salesforce.com and other SaaS vendors have established the legitimacy of the multi-tenant model. If it didn't work, we'd be hearing constant complaints about compromises of data and loss of business,” wrote Babcock. “The question of whether it can be made safer than it is, however, I would answer at face value, 'of course it can.'”

Multi-tenant apps aim to serve as many different users at the same time as possible. Babcock believes multi-tenant apps are the future of the industry. Multi-tenant apps are necessary, he says, because without them, users will end up spending far more money and resources on services they already take for granted.

Recently, concerns about cloud security led an internet security watchdog to call on Congress to revise the Electronic Communications Privacy Act. However, the growth in cloud computing is also expected to cause cloud security to be worth as much as $1.5 billion by 2015.