it needs to process the millions of returns that pour in, and then as easily turn it off and cease paying for it. “You’re able to spin up your services as you require them; you pay for
just as
Mohammad Akif is the national security and privacy lead for Microsoft Canada. With more than 15 years of industry expe- rience he spends a significant amount of time working with Microsoft’s major cus- tomers in the financial, energy, health- care and public sectors to help improve their security postures and refocus their IT security departments away from yes- terday’s threats and onto the modern threat landscape. He is also a frequent speaker at security conferences in Canada and around the world.
much as you need,” noted Weigelt. Shiau agreed. “I think the classic ex- ample for cloud is the light switch – you flip it on, and you’ve got whatever power you need, you flip it off, and you’re not paying for that electricity any more. I think there are also benefits in terms of simpli- fication; there always will be a place for a fat client, but for a lot of different roles based on what sort of functionality people need, you can simplify those people to thin clients or browser-based computing and save a lot of money that way.” Added O’Higgins: “The big [benefit] is you save money and really optimize your business. You’ll never pay for excess ca- pacity. Your capex becomes opex – you can scale within minutes.” As society evolves, there is no doubt that Canada’s digital economy and Open Data initiatives are custom-made for the cloud. The City of Edmonton, for example, needed to get information to both the public and private sectors, and was able to put its
repository in the cloud and allow others to build applications from it.
As such, the mobile workforce is one
group that can profit from the cloud. From the consumer perspective, there are a lot of social communities sprouting up, and because of this, Weigelt believes, some companies are looking at ways to encom- pass some of the consumer-oriented serv- ices to accommodate the needs of their younger, connected workers.
In fact, asserted O’Higgins, there’s talk
about 2012 being the crossover point when more Internet connections will occur over smartphones rather than PCs.
SECURITY & PRIVACY
Even with all the benefits of cloud computing, many enterprises still have a lot of questions about
the technology, particularly sur-
rounding security and privacy, which is why Shiau believes it’s generating a huge degree of internal planning within enterprises. The panel was then asked what spe- cific fears or doubts they are hearing about the cloud. Carter, from the privacy commissioner’s office, spoke first. “Security dominates all of the discus- sions,” he said, adding people want to
18 SECURITY MATTERS • MAY/JUNE 2010
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