Forumite Members › General Topics › Tech › Security Talk › Big Clouds=Big Targets
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Ed P.
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February 27, 2017 at 9:29 am #4564
For me there are two lessons that come from the CloudFlare debacle. Writing totally secure code is probably impossible unless it is trite, ALL code will have some vulnerabilities tucked away if not in the code then in the OS or compiler. Cloudflare itself fell over not because they were particularly careless, but because an army of hackers kept picking away at them because they were a BIG target.
It is why I am happiest with my OWN cloud. Even if the hackers break into Synology’s code they still have to get my address, and hopefully by then Synology will have plugged the gap. :yahoo:
[edit] I suppose there is a third lesson – encrypt everything, even on your own Cloud and preferably use something that has ‘strong’ primes in it!
February 27, 2017 at 4:00 pm #4569I’m finding small businesses very skeptical these days about Cloud storage.
February 27, 2017 at 4:23 pm #4570I’m finding small businesses very skeptical these days about Cloud storage.
Is that something new or was the cloud storage issue one that had never been fully appreciated before?
Many small businesses are pretty busy keeping pace with in their front of face issues, like getting staff who know what their jobs actually mean and paying the increasing business rates bills, etc. I wonder if cloud storage is another issues that feels more like a threat than an aid? There have been a number of recent news items about storage losses. Those rather than leakage must put the frighteners on businesses already worried about the VAT many and HMRC in general. The cloud ate my data would possibly not fly well with them.
February 27, 2017 at 4:54 pm #4571Info Systems, like most professional areas is plagued by ‘Flavour of the Month’ syndrome. While Cloud may be great in some contexts – particularly storage of low value items -e.g. keep your music in the Cloud, Apps distribution etc. Unfortunately it was oversold by ‘Consultants’ as the panacea for EVERYTHING. A bit like Agile was oversold as THE methodology for developing systems without users having to do their (appropriate) share of the hard work. I’d take a bet that very few (if any) Government Agile projects get finished – never mind on time/budget.
When I reached the age of cynicism I came to realise that you need to look for the flaws in anything where someone offers to do all the hard work, and take all the worries off your shoulders. While both Cloud and Agile have now had their public come-uppance, it is a great shame that ‘Off-Shoring’ has similarly not had some major commercial fraud to expose the very obvious problems of putting high value objects in the hands of people who are paid peanuts.
February 27, 2017 at 9:48 pm #4579I suspect there has been already and hushed up. What can’t be kept quiet is when the bank batch jobs fail or the ATMs go out.
These systems were largely kept bodged together by people like me who once they reach 50 have the redundancy target painted to their backs. I was supposed to take place in knowledge transfer sessions but none were organised in time for my departure, despite pressure from the customer who knew exactly what was (and wasn’t happening).
With the Cloud, as you know I have always been skeptical for small business (big Corporate is different). I have seen what an enthusiastic amateur with a Dropbox account can do in a 7 person 2 branch setup. He had bought a Synology off me but just couldn’t get his head around permissions and wouldn’t let me help. I later found out why (several sets of books and holiday calendars, he actually had 70+ days leave one year). Anyway, Dropbox is gone and Cloud Station has been doing the business for nearly 10 months now and no dramas. The Cloud is still involved in that there is a weekly (differential) archive to Amazon AWS via Glacier. But that is encrypted before it leaves and in transmission.
All my business data and that of the other small business I look after is treated in exactly the same way. Synology Cloud Station on the PC / laptop, daily backup of the NAS to a USB drive and a weekly Glacier archive. My total Amazon bill for all of us is still <$2 a month.
Cloud Station allows you to go back 32 versions of a file and Hyperbackup lets me go back 10 days, some of the others are 30 days (depends on size of backup vs size of storage), and if the place burns down I can get back to where I was on Saturday morning.
February 28, 2017 at 7:46 am #4586I would not knock Synology’s Cloud Station as Cloud connectivity really seems to offer the best of all worlds particularly if you include the necessary encryption step. However as you point out, even that solution has flavour-of-the-month (FOTM) problems if the data owner cannot be bothered to implement it properly. The biggest danger as ever is Management or Consultants who have a vague grasp of IT issues and look at FOTM as a way of downsizing/down-skilling or avoiding hard work.
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