The use of cloud storage is slowly becoming a typical way to store all of the data we seem to accumulate in our lives… As with many other home adaptations of online technology, photos and music figure highly in this topic, where online photo storage has become ubiquitous (Flickr, Picasa, et.al.),and with the upcoming online music storage apps…Amazon just came out with one, and Google and Apple are seemingly in the batter’s circle.
There is certainly an elegance to storing various forms of data in the cloud. But if you keep tabs on these issues, you may be aware of such imbroglios as Amazon’s problems with their cloud storage app (they provide excess bandwidth and storage for many big sites…), and the possible security problems LastPass had with what appears to have been a hacking event.
In the case of these two recent Cloud-related ‘problems’, the results…at least to end users (like me) were quite different. LastPass presented information (emails to all of its subscribers…), and presented themselves as leaping into action to rectify the problem and to ensure our (i.e. subscribers) security… as a result, I actually feel safer with LastPass than when I first used it.
Amazon hasn’t done quite as well (seemingly). I am not an Amazon cloud storage user to any real degree (BTW, I expect this to change soon…) but I have seen a lot of online griping about how slow they were to keep clients in the loop. From what I have read, there were even some actual ‘real’ losses of data…
Nonetheless, this is the place where I could explain that this is similar to comparing commercial air flight with driving…most of these various forms of online storage are statistically safer than you , and your last backup of your PC (all those months ago…) .
Why the Cloud Is Actually the Safest Place for Your Data
http://mashable.com/2011/03/29/cloud-computing-security
Worried about your data? If you’re not, you’re kidding yourself. It’s become clear over the past few months that the risk of security breaches has reached a new and frightening level — from sophisticated tools in the hands of national governments and organized crime to spontaneous attacks harnessing the resources of thousands of loosely connected vigilantes. Add to that the dizzying array of devices now used to access, move and store data. Security strategies that seemed airtight only a few years ago now look like so much Swiss cheese.
In this light, your first instinct might be to pull back from cloud computing, viewing it as inherently less secure than keeping data and applications locked into hardware. After all, the word “cloud” itself implies that your precious assets are out there floating around somewhere, right? It’s an understandable reaction and one that couldn’t be more wrong. In fact, the cloud is now the safest place for your data.
How to Permanently Store Your Data in the Cloud
http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/permanently-store-data-cloud
With the establishment of the Internet as a giant storage place, metaphorically referred to as The Cloud, local backups, cross-device syncing, and local data storage is becoming more and more redundant. In fact, the average user already stores a bulk of personal data online. Soon, even the data hoarders may find sufficient space in the digital cloud to say goodbye to terabyte-sized hard drives and complicated backup and sync procedures.
Cloud Messaging: Email
Whether you maintain a webmail account like Yahoo, Hotmail, or Gmail or send and receive email via a desktop client, your messages inevitably pass through The Cloud and are stored on Internet servers, at least temporarily.
Online File Storage: Dropbox
At first sight, Dropbox is a harmless little folder that sits on your desktop and holds your files. What hides behind it however, is a nifty little sync tool that works in the background and never hassles you. Not only are files in your Dropbox automatically encrypted and synced to your online Dropbox account, you also have access to 30 days of undo history.
Brain Online: Evernote
Evernote is something like your online pinboard or fridge for useful bits and pieces of information, some even call it their external brain. Whether it is business cards, recipes, ideas, pictures, or invitations, on Evernote you can store any piece of information you want to remember.
Passwords Anywhere: LastPass
What is the greatest annoyance when you quickly want to check your email on a friend’s computer or in an Internet café? After years of letting your browser store your password, you actually forget it! The same fate awaits those who reinstall their computer or set up a new device.
LastPass is a long term solution because it encrypts and stores your passwords online. It also offers extensions for all major browsers and mobile devices, allowing you to sync passwords across multiple browsers and operating systems and all your gadgets.
LastPass CEO reveals details on security breach
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1009_3-20060464-83.html
Following yesterday’s revelation of a likely security breach at password management company LastPass, the company’s CEO is revealing more details about the incident and trying to offer some comfort and advice to his users.
Speaking yesterday with PC World, LastPass CEO Joe Siegrist admits he may have been too "alarmist" in sounding the alarm bell over the potential security breach. But the anomalies the company found when looking over its logs rose too much of a red flag.
Siegrist explained that he doesn’t think a lot of data would’ve been hacked, but just enough to capture a small number of user names and passwords. Though the passwords were in an encrypted format, those combined with the usernames could give hackers enough of a starting point to hunt for accounts with weak master passwords. The use of a master password is critical as it can unlock the door to all of a user’s Web site passwords, one reason why sites like LastPass urge users to use complex, non-dictionary passwords.
Amazon cloud outage derails Reddit, Quora
http://news.cnet.com/8301-30685_3-20056029-264.html
A partial failure at Amazon Web Services’ cloud-computing infrastructure brought down some Internet operations today, including the Web sites of Quora and Reddit.
The outage struck the Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) service at Amazon’s northern Virginia site, which handles AWS operations for the U.S. East Coast. The problems began at 1:41 a.m. PT, according to Amazon’s AWS status dashboard, with delays and errors when connecting to servers over a network.
A long list of customers has come to rely on Amazon EC2, which provides servers on a pay-as-you-go basis that lets customers ramp or down according to varying computing needs.
Amazon said on the dashboard it was making progress in resolving the problems but as of 9 a.m. PT was still having troubles
