UNCG professor focuses on security for cloud services

Wednesday, May 11, 2011

An authority on cyber crime and professor at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro asserts that the cloud is going to have problems coping with its role as technology-du-jour in the near future.

"Cloud providers have very, very sophisticated technology, but it is nascent, or emerging, technology. As a very new area, whatever security mechanisms have been used in the past, they might not be applicable to the cloud, so they have to develop new types of security," said Nir Kshertri in a statement summarizing his recent testimony before the International Telecommunications Union.

Part of the problem, according to Kshertri, is that the cloud is a tempting target for hackers. Access to a highly centralized cloud storage facility could provide a goldmine of valuable personal data. Additionally, legal issues have not kept up with technological development, creating a gray area around cloud services.

A counterargument to the first part of Kshertri's critique, according to tech experts, is that the centralization in question enables the concentration of security resources at the only possible access points.