Cloud computing's dark side examined

As more enterprises begin to seriously consider moving applications to the cloud, ala Google Apps or Amazon EC2, it's time to get past the hype and take a critical eye to the downsides.

As Network World reported last week, Gartner just came out with a report titled "Assessing the Security Risks of Cloud Computing. In it, the analyst firm cites seven major risks enterprises should be aware of before making the leap into the cloud. These include such issues as needing to know who exactly is managing your data and how they access it, as well as the actual data location (is it in India?) and concrete data recovery expectations.

In a similar vein, Infoworld just published an article titled "The Dangers of Cloud Computing," in which it lists several cloud-only issues such as the lack of security standardization or the inability for enterprise users to choose to stay on a version that's not the latest and greatest.

The upshot? While the benefits to cloud computing are many, smart enterprises would be wise to take a cautiously paranoid approach.

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