Accessibility v. Security

By | December 15, 2006
4 Comments

Popular Mechanics has published an interesting year-end article entitled “10 Tech Concepts You Need to Know for 2007.”

Two of the “concepts” look like they’d work particularly well together:

Data Cloud. It was the last concept listed in the article, but I think it may be the most important:

Ferrying data from one hard drive to another via e-mail, flash memory thumb drives or rewritable discs is no way to live. What if every one of your files, from skimpy documents to gigabyte-hogging music collections, were accessible from any Internet connection.

Blogs and browser-based email is just the first wave of Data Cloud technology. Phil and I tried the online word processor Writely last year before it was bought out by Google. The idea is sound, but Google will need to improve the service.

And Google will. It seems obvious that Google intends to be a major contender in the Data Cloud race:

A host of products and services let you create a data cloud right now, from Maxtor’s networked hard drives to Google’s rumored Gdrive, with “unlimited” storage on the search giant’s servers.

The biggest hurdle for Data Cloud adoption is security. As an attorney it would be nice to access my client’s files at any time from any machine. But my clients have an interest in their private information remaining private. Another “concept” in the Popular Mechanic’s article may help with Data Cloud security:

Body Area Network

Picture this: The cell phone in your pocket sends a tiny electrical current—a fraction of an amp—along your skin, so your car door springs open at your touch and your PC logs in when you grab the mouse.

That tiny electrical current could deliver a 1000-character password to your electronic devices. Of course the cell itself must know that it’s in the hands of its owner and not an imposter – perhaps by way of a fingerprint scanner.

  • AndrewS

    What if every one of your files, from skimpy documents to gigabyte-hogging music collections, were accessible from any Internet connection.

    Wow, what a concept! Oh, wait. I’ve been able to do that ever since I got a broadband internet connection. I use SSH, but any type of VPN should let you access all of your files with at least decent security, and the best part is, all of your data remains at home (or work) on your own machine, not some distant corporation’s servers.

    Snarkiness aside, I can’t see why I would ever trust someone else to handle my data when it’s easy enough to do myself. There are certainly aspects of it that should be easier to setup and manage than is currently the case, but fixing those problems seems better than the alternatives.

  • https://www.blog.speculist.com Stephen Gordon

    Andrew:

    It’s true that some form of “data cloud” has been around for awhile. I think the distinction is whether the move from computer to computer is seamless.

    The goal is to eliminate setup time on the new machine – you don’t even have to tell the machine to download. You just login and you’re immediately in the virtual machine that follows you from device to device.

    Your desktop looks the same, your files are arrange the same, etc.

  • Jim Strickland

    I think that security will be such a problem that the better solution will be to carry your data and your computer with you, in a small, easily portable form factor. The user interface for the computer is the only part that need be on your desk.

    Imagine computing where the hardware can be tailored to the software, if need be (see video editing.) Imagine each application not interacting with anything else, save through a well defined network API.

    Imagine, most of all, being able to use the computer at home, the computer at work, the ones in an internet cafe, etc etc., slide your computing key in, and pick up where you left off before you got on that plane, and that the contents of that key are roughly as secure as your wallet for the whole time you’re not working on them.

    I think less and less high value data will be accessible over the public net, unless security improves drastically, and what I’ve suggested above is what I think will evolve in such an environment.

    -Jim

  • rapidsslonline

    Yes…cloud computing is slowly making its way into the market and google wants to dominate this field too. I just want to mention here one thing that was discussed with my clients recently – the main concern of security is actually very deep and there seems to be no available solution to it. A server in which a cheap ssl certificate is installed will be targeted by most of the hackers and they can actually retrieve any data from it. Even a server in which high brand secure site ev was installed was hacked by our specialist. So, this issue has to be tackled before cloud computing can actually make its way into the masses.