Risk Management in the Cloud and Cloud Outages
Cloud computing is facilitated often through the open Internet, which is not designed for secure communications. From the cloud user perspective, access to the cloud through a Virtual Private Network (VPN) is a possibility, but this is not the default access method for all cloud users. Given this reality, the cloud service users must be prepared for risk management because they do not control the cloud hardware or the communication channels. Added to this uncertainty is the potential for cloud service outage for risk management planning. In this chapter, the authors discuss the various aspects of risk management from the cloud user perspective. In addition, they analyze some of the major cloud outages over the past five years that have resulted in loss of trust. This list includes the outages in Amazon Web Services, Google, Windows, and Rackspace.