A management view of security and cloud computing

Cloud security is often seen as a technical problem. We argue that its solution needs both technical and management input. We find that cloud computing offers reliability and flexibility and its low cost makes it attractive, particularly to small and medium sized enterprises. We note that security technology must be adopted universally and often promptly. It requires both an organisational commitment and an individual commitment, which is most readily obtained if the technology places a low knowledge burden on users: that is, it is transparent or adds only a few, often-repeated, tasks. We note that providers have already achieved this in many cloud services. Organisations need clarity of what security is provided and who is responsible for breaches. They also need cloud providers to help them identify and recover from breaches. We consider why breaches have now become a hot topic, and provide a suggestion of how to mitigate the impact of these whilst meeting our management objectives and complying with the forthcoming EU General Data Protection Regulation.