Hacker attacks threaten cloud prospects

The recent high-profile hacking of Google’s Gmail service and Sony’s Playstation gaming network, and Friday’s statement by plane manufacturer Boeing that it is “under continuous hacker attack”, is threatening to slow the take-off of the next big thing in the computing space — the cloud.

The recent high-profile hacking of Google’s Gmail service and Sony’s Playstation gaming network, and Friday’s statement by plane manufacturer Boeing that it is “under continuous hacker attack”, is threatening to slow the take-off of the next big thing in the computing space — the cloud.

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Computer companies will need to collaborate to work on addressing security issues to boost confidence in cloud computing, where data and software is stored on servers and accessed via the Internet, especially in the corporate space where the potential market size is much larger than in retail.

“Many enterprises have reservations about the security of cloud computing because of the multi-tenant architecture and the fact that cloud providers are ‘big targets’,” said Steve Hodgkinson, IT research director at UK-based research firm Ovum.

Analysts and industry experts believe hardware-based security provides a higher protection than encrypted software. Chipmakers are working to build more authentication into the silicon.

“We have to do a combination of mitigating things like building more security in the infrastructure,” said Boyd Davis, a vice president at chipmaker Intel Corp, speaking at the Computex here.