The great and powerful Woz has spoken, and the once great technology wizard sees a storm brewing on the horizon of cloud security. Following a recent one-man show (performed by actor Mike Daisey) depicting the life of his departed Apple co-founder Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak let his feelings be known regarding the cloud and third party information storage in a brief and somewhat casual (although clearly impassioned) speech
Never one to pull punches, mince words, or beat around the bush the message was clear, “I think [the future of cloud technology is] going to be horrendous.” The problem, according to Wozniak, is simple, the cloud gives proprietary control of your information to someone else, with little users often having little understanding regarding security protocols, information management, or how the rights of information are handled.
Further, when pitted against the nefarious goals of the growing number of hacker collectives the world over, the cloud is making the Herculean task of managing your information that much more difficult, and it’s only a matter of time before everything comes crashing down.
We all want to believe we’re in control; it’s what helps many of us cope with the cacophony of chaos that this life often throws at us. But the fact of the matter is that as third party cloud storage increasingly becomes part of our digital existence, the less control we’ll have.
Joining actor Mike Daisey on stage following the performance of the one-man show “The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs” in Washington recently, Wozniak clearly and concisely indentified the problem with third party information storage. “With the cloud, you don’t own anything. You already signed it away,” adding, “The more we transfer everything onto the web, onto the cloud, the less we’re going to have control over it.”
As CNET writer Chris Matyszczyk explains, the greatest threats posed to cloud technology are all related to information security, and given the fact that current security and protection protocols seem unable to thwart the nefarious intentions of the hacker community, things will only get worse.
In fact, the tactics and strategies employed by the hacker community seem to growing exponentially faster than any organized response to it, meaning that–if extrapolated over the next several years—cloud companies will soon have no reliable way of protecting your data.
The evolution of the hacker threat mirrors the growing doping scandal in the sports world, Matyszczyk explains, meaning that while testing and protocols certainly exist, those that seek to use banned substances (or steal information) will always find a way to stay one step ahead of the law.
In the end, despite what you think about third party cloud services, the reality is that by using the cloud you relinquish control over your information, a problem made that much worse, according to Wozniak, given the fact that these companies simply can’t keep your information safe…if that’s even important to them to begin with.
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Written by: Matt Klassen. www.digitcom.ca. Follow TheTelecomBlog.com by: RSS, Twitter, Facebook, or YouTube.
