IronKey, the seven-year-old Internet security and privacy house, has changed its name to Marble Cloud in celebration of the introduction its new cloud security service.
Marble is meant to protect employee-owned iOS, Android, Windows and Linux mobile devices and desktop/laptop platforms.
The company says any user – contractor, remote worker, customer or supply chain partner – can securely access enterprise-provisioned public and private clouds from anywhere, on any of their own devices.
It’s a hardened multi-layer environment that’s supposed to be invulnerable – repeat, invulnerable – to Trojans, man-in-the-middle, man-in-the-browser, malevolent Wi-Fi networks, DNS poisoning and other state-of-the-threat attacks.
Being a toughie explains its less-than-fluffy new name.

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Automattic, the hosting company for WordPress.com servers, knows the future is now. They have 123 people that operate like self-employed workers, taking advantage of cloud and mobile apps to communicate across 26 countries and 94 cities. Everyone works from home. Here are six trends driving us out of our offices and into the cloud.
The fact that you are reading this is testament to the increased buzz surrounding SaaS/Cloud computing, a buzz that was absent in previous incarnations of the technology (notably ASP during the 1990s). Whether the buzz is driving vendors to produce applications specific for the cloud, or improved applications are feeding the fervor, is a mute point. The fact is that in order to drive a greater usage of the cloud, applications written specifically for the cloud need to be freely available. Advances in technology, the availability of open-source code, and modern platforms such as AWS, are fueling the development of leading-edge applications. With innovations in distribution like the Apple app store, users are now connected with these applications like never before.

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Cloud computing is so alluring. The public cloud economizes infrastructure resources and creates a scalable, on-demand source for compute capacity. Additionally, the cloud can be a strategic asset for enterprises that know how to migrate, integrate and govern deployments securely.
Apple co-founder, Steve Wozniak recently said, «A lot of people feel ‘Oh, everything is really on my computer,’ but I say the more we transfer everything onto the web, onto the cloud, the less we’re going to have control over it.»
In fact, over 70% of IT professionals worry about security according to an IDG Enterprise Cloud Computing Study.
Boiled down, security, access and connectivity are really issues of control.
As any prudent cloud user, the application has its own unique security features, such as disk encryption and port filtering. But do these layers of security features overlap or conflict? What happens to ownership after migration? Do solutions really have to be architected before and after deployment?

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Cloud computing is one of the most strategic initiatives that enterprises will adopt over the next several years. Only an open hybrid cloud can help you unlock the full benefits of cloud economics and gain agility across your entire infrastructure – physical, virtual and public cloud resources included.
In his session at the 11th International Cloud Expo, David Kang, Cloud Practice Manager, Global Strategy and Solutions, at Red Hat, will explain how open standards, open APIs and open source software are changing the structure of an enterprise cloud.

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I apparently like hitting myself on the head with a hammer, as I’m once again reviewing estimates of global cloud-computing spending and growth.

It’s difficult enough to get insightful estimates of IT spending in general – the most valid number seems to be about $3.6 trillion (coming from IDC), but which includes telco. Where do we draw the line with telco today, with smartphones and tablets and literally zettabytes of information flying around each year?

Anyway, rather than parrot or compare cloud estimates, which are all out there in a tube somewhere on the Internet, I’ll focus on the key aspect of cloud: it’s growing faster than IT overall.

This may seem to an insight from The Book of Duh, but it relates to cloud’s inevitability. Sooner or later, cloud computing will mean the same thing as computing. It may take 50 years or it may take 100. It won’t take 5 or 10. But it is inevitable because the promise of cloud computing is an evergreen: efficiency and elasticity.

The numbers I’ve seen show cloud rising as percentage of overall IT from 2% today to 11% by 2020, to 6% today growing to 22% by 2020. Again, given the mixing of computers and telco into many IT estimates, I don’t see how we can measure this accurately.

But we can simply accept that it’s growing, and it will have specific benefits for everyone.

Counter-arguments are being made today that cloud is not actually less expensive on a cashflow basis, even if it shifts expenses from investment to operations. Counter-counter-arguments are being made that nobody has promised cloud would always be cheaper.

But there is some place in every large organization for cloud, and my own direct experience has been that cloud is the go-to idea for smaller companies that are trying something new. One project I’m on doesn’t have budget for big iron or even much little iron. It does have budget for whatever cloud instances we’ll need for the next year.

So I’ve found the pain stops when I put the hammer back in the toolbox. I’ll be at Cloud Expo West in Santa Clara in a few weeks to see what’s going on, to ignore any information about growth, focus on any information about usability, and enjoy the inevitability of what’s going on.

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A wealth of security information exists in our networks from a variety of sources – policy servers, firewalls, switches, networking infrastructure, defensive components, and more. Unfortunately, most of that information is locked away in separate silos due to differences in products and technologies, as well as by companies’ organizational boundaries. Further complicating the issue, information is stored in different formats and communicated over different protocols.
An open standard from the Trusted Computing Group (TCG) offers the capability to centralize communication and coordination of information to enable security automation. The Interface for Metadata Access Points – IF-MAP for short – is like Facebook for network and security technology, allowing real-time sharing of information across a heterogeneous environment.

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