One of ironies of security is that email, one of the most pervasive forms of data transmission and storage, is also probably one of least secure. Security concerns are being raised in many new circles, specifically virtualization , cloud computing and cloud storage services . The Wall Street Journal reported rumors of a Google storage service, Microsoft Live Workspace is another such service, and of course Amazon has their S3 storage service of On Demand software companies.

While the threat landscape of security is constantly changing, now the assumptions around the assets used to transmit, process and store our data and systems are changing right from under security professionals feet. I believe we need to rethink the physical security paradigm of boxes or appliances like firewalls, intrusion prevention systems, VPN concentrators, etc., and assume that our systems, network and data could reside in many virtual forms and live in clouds outside our direct management.

Is Microsoft thinking about this? Cisco? Others? No one is talking about a new game for security and I think it's about time to start the ball rolling. Otherwise, we risk that security not only takes a backseat, but that it could be too difficult to catch up to cloud computing, storage, the Virtualization Center and other thinking around how the data center is fundamentally changing.

Note: If you'd like to hear more on this topic, read my blog post Who's securing"My Stuff" at Google, Microsoft and Yahoo? on my personal blog, The Converging Network . 

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