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Subject:RE: Authoring tool that works in the cloud? From:"Dan Goldstein" <DGoldstein -at- riverainmedical -dot- com> To:<techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com> Date:Tue, 29 Mar 2011 13:29:40 -0400
You can use an in-house EDMS, accessed by remote users via a VPN. Or you
can contract out the hosting (and often also the security and backup) to
someone else. Google Apps and MS Cloud Connect are examples of the
second option. Each option has its own advantages and disadvantages.
Whichever option you go with, there are physical servers somewhere with
your files on them. There ain't no freakin' "cloud."
-----Original Message-----
From: McLauchlan, Kevin
Sent: Tuesday, March 29, 2011 12:09 PM
To: Dan Goldstein; techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com
Subject: RE: Authoring tool that works in the cloud?
Let's put it this way:
The day that one of those joint announcements goes out, saying that
Google is using my employer's HSMs to secure your access-to, and your
data-in ... the Google-controlled regions of "the cloud", is the day
when any of us will be permitted to use cloud-ish spaces for company
work and data storage. Not before.
Use of cloud resources is safe only when you have end-to-end encryption,
and nothing less. If there is any point in the entire scheme where your
data exist unencrypted, then the security is incomplete and you should
wait some more. As well, nobody but you should have the keys that
encrypt that data where it resides. ANYwhere that it resides.
It's possible to secure every inch of the loop (your
desktop/notepad/iPad/phone out through the ISP to the cloud provider's
network and onto their application servers and database servers, then
all the way back to your screen and keypad) with no gaps, even while
your data is being massaged and edited on their servers by your remote
actions, but it's costly. In order to do it all without imposing
excessive latency, you need heavy iron to process the security at all
choke-points.
The industry is in the chicken-and-egg stage, where volume-related
savings have not yet kicked in. So the only folks who have the kind of
heavy-duty cloud security that I mention are certain big companies and
government agencies with the deep pockets. And mostly, they are still
making their own clouds, not using cloud services available to the
public. I don't think your average document or price-list or customer
list or business plan or sales projection or patent application... is
end-to-end secure in the generic cloud just yet. I could be wrong.
Back in that first paragraph, substitute any other big player, instead
of Google. Several are making inroads into this market, as we
speak/write.
If you are a contractor, I wouldn't advise being a cloud user, when it
comes to your customer's docs - especially copies of their source docs
that you research when making their customer docs. If you signed an NDA,
you can't guarantee the security of anything you take out of their
premises, if it wafts through cloud-land. If I was working on the Great
American Novel or screenplay, I don't think I'd trust it out there, yet,
either. That's coming, though.
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