Data security concerns were highlighted recently from the activities of hacking group LulzSec this summer.
Emerging from hacktivist collective Anonymous, one of the aims of the group was to point out weaknesses in prominent online security systems by breaching them and releasing the data obtained. Organisations infiltrated included Sony Pictures, Fox and the US Senate.
These attacks showed that companies need to check security infrastructure and procedures to make sure that data is as well protected as it can be.
Dermot O’Connell, country manager for Dell Ireland, says that firms looking to move to the cloud should ensure they have the correct security credentials to guard their IT if they wish to host mission-critical applications there.
“Hacking wasn’t something created by the cloud. Hacking has been there since computer networks began. Hacking will go on and there will be more malicious code attacking systems,” he says.
“Under all the disciplines in IT, security is where you need the expertise and any firm should look for those expertises among providers if they are embarking on a cloud journey.
“The ideal scenario is that if some piece of malicious code ends up on the internet there is someone looking out for you who catches it and neutralises it before it reaches your system and makes your system immune.
“To be able to do that from an internal perspective, it would be OK for large companies like Dell or major financial institutions to have that kind of security, but for the rest of us securing our information we wouldn’t have the same resources, so I would say that is the area regardless of cloud, or non-cloud, I would having expertise overlooking security,” adds O’Connell.
