Over and over again we are pummeled with statistics on how risk is growing in disproportion to security readiness.

-91% of companies have experienced at least one IT security event from an external source.

-90% of all cyber crime costs are those caused by web attacks, malicious code and malicious insiders.

-40% reported rogue cloud issues (shadow IT) experienced the exposure of confidential information as a result

-34% share passwords with their co-workers for applications like FedEx, Twitter, Staples, LinkedIn.

These are real stats from studies by like Gartner, Forrester, Ponemon, Kaspersky, Eschelon and others. But there’s one stat that really curls my hair (what little of it is left):

• Due to complexity, over 70% of organizations still not adequately securing critical systems.

Wow. It’s a staggering number. But it got me to thinking why. What is causing this universal security paralysis? Now I’m not proclaiming securipocolypse …

It turns out cloud computing could be the most useful sales associate on the floor, and you won’t have to worry about it stealing sales leads, ala “Glengarry Glen Ross.”
With the help of cloud computing, some brick-and-mortar stores are combating showrooming, a trend where consumers look at items in a store before buying them online, usually at lower prices, according to an article on Wired.com.
Clouds offer retailers a way to explore the potential of Big Data analytics to understand their customers better. In order to compete with e-tailers, retailers are tapping social networks to learn what customers are saying about them and about their competitors. Weather data is being used to influence product-purchasing decisions, and merchandise promotions are organized around social events.
In many cases, brick-and-mortar retailers are even finding new data sources. Some companies are tracking the movement of customers within stores and analyzing how many stop at displays to improve the effectiveness of merchandising. Others are considering installing license-plate cameras in parking lots to find out which customer is about to walk into the store.

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You’re getting pitched every day from your legacy enterprise software and hardware vendors about “cloud.” They’re doing an amazing job of convincing your CIO and CTO about what cloud is and how you should use it. The reality is they’re defending their shrinking market share and keeping you on the legacy treadmill for as long as they can by selling you solutions that aren’t “cloud.”
In her session at the 12th International Cloud Expo, Niki Acosta, Cloud Evangelista for Rackspace, will talk through the five dirty little secrets your legacy IT vendors won’t tell you about cloud. Attendees will leave with an understanding of how you should really be thinking about building enterprise apps for the cloud while embracing the fundamental shift away from legacy IT.

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Joyent, one of the original infrastructure clouds that set up about the same time as Amazon Web Services but without Amazon’s giant fallback cushion, restructured its cloud line Thursday, adding a bunch of new instances that pretty much map to Amazon’s.

It also introduced reserved pricing plans.

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Everyone is virtualizing, but are they realizing any of the promised savings? This overview of IBM’s new virtualization optimization solutions will show you how integrated Cloud Solutions like SmartCloud Provisioning and SmartCloud Monitoring can deliver the savings virtualization promises.

Organizations are using intelligent management and analytics to provide the insight needed to optimize their virtualized infrastructure and dramatically improve availability, reduce data storage footprints and streamline patch management. In his session at 12th Cloud Expo | Cloud Expo New York [June 10-13], IBM’s Dan Carr will review lessons learned from real-world experience.

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Imagine if you could take a time machine five years into the future, so that you would know which of today’s new technologies panned out and which did not.

Most companies have only started using cloud in the past two years. But there are some companies that have been using cloud for five years or more. They are “five years into the future” — they’ve learned things that companies that just…

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Saurabh Sharma, Senior Analyst, IT Solutions

Ovum’s Integration Middleware Global Market Forecast Model estimates that the spend on cloud-based integration platforms will grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 31% between 2012 and 2018, reaching $3.7bn by the end of 2018. Over the same period, spending on cloud-based integration platforms in the Americas and Asia-Pacific regions will grow at CAGRs of 27% and 44% respectively. The Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) cloud-based integration platforms market is expected to grow from $274m in 2013 to $905m by the end of 2018. The forecast figures exclude any spending on outsourcing services delivered on top of cloud-based integration platforms.

iPaaS is emerging as a suitable option for a wide range of integration needs

The emergence of integration-as-a-service (IaaS), the first truly cloud-based integration approach, marked the start of the “middleware-as-a-service” era. These solutions focused on enabling SaaS integration …

Cloudscaling, the four-year old start-up that insists it’s got the most advanced OpenStack infrastructure system, has picked up a $10 million B round from Trinity Ventures and two new investors, new strategic partners Juniper Networks and Seagate.
It reportedly got a $4 million A round from Trinity in 2011.
In April Cloudscaling wheeled out its turnkey Open Cloud System (OCS) 2.5, which it integrated with Juniper’s virtual network control (VNC) technology, JunosV Contrail, signaling their partnership.
The two now plan other joint networking solutions that would support a new generation of cloud-aware enterprise workloads.
The Register thinks Juniper may wind up buying the company.
Cloudscaling also joined the Seagate Cloud Builder Alliance Partner program in April and, as part of the program, it and Seagate are focused on developing optimized storage solutions for OpenStack.

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“The last time I checked, people do not change their social security numbers very often…”
While in constant debate over data encryption and ease of access, I encountered a train of thought that made my jaw drop. A tradeshow attendee suggested encrypting everything, but just use a weak algorithm; so as not to make it impossible to decode if needed in the future.

Before smirking and quoting statistics as truth, I stopped to ponder: was there any merit to the statement, what was the sensitivity level of the data, where was it being stored, who had access to it, what was the definition of a weak algorithm, was this archival data or was it accessed and changed often?

Through conversation, the premise was potentially plausible (with some big question marks), but the logic was still thoroughly flawed. Yes, the data was constantly changing and only updated records were being sent to branch offices via a public cloud file sharing service, but the data did contain personally identifiable information. The last time I checked, people do not change their social security numbers very often and data captured by an intruder will stay in its captured state.

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