Salesforce hails security warning as sign of cloud maturity
Salesforce.com has hailed a warning by the Australian insurance industry regulator about the risks of cloud computing as evidence that the technology is maturing, amid a debate over security and privacy in the cloud.
On Wednesday, the cloud-computing vendor responded to an open letter sent by the Australian Prudential Regulatory Authority (APRA) that warned that cloud-computing services are not being subjected to the same rigourous examination as outsourcing before being adopted. "The letter is an acknowledgement that Australian financial services institutions are rapidly adopting cloud computing — just like their counterparts in North America, Europe and other parts of Asia — and need to be judicious in their deployment of cloud services," Salesforce said in a statement.
The company's statement came in the wake of the International Association of Privacy Professionals conference in Sydney, where the local industry debated the security and privacy questions surrounding cloud computing.
"Cybercriminals can control servers in clouds, denying legitimate users access to websites and targeting websites with repeated messages or images," the Australian minister for home affairs and justice Brendan O'Connor said. "There have also been suggestions that clouds can be used as launching pads for new attacks, such as trying all possible password combinations to break into encrypted data."
For more on this ZDNet UK-selected story, see Salesforce: APRA cloud warnings not bad on ZDNet Australia.