Storing data on “The Cloud” is all the rage these days. And like any immature business technology, there is thus far not a ton of guidance for companies trying to educate themselves on the protocols, standards and best practices to follow before they make the transition from their internal servers to the cloud.
To help in this area, we just ran a feature story on the topic, highlighting the benefits (cost, speedy disaster recovery) and the risks (security, uncertain contracts with suppliers) that any risk professional should read. (Yes, I am biased … but it’s a good breakdown. You may also benefit from the advice surrounding security, customer service and integrity in “Putting Cloud Storage Providers to the Test.”)
Fortunately, however, the federal government has launched an initiative to standardize all of the key areas related to cloud computing.
The federal government’s standards organization plans to develop a roadmap for cloud computing standards and guidance, National Institute of Standards and Technology officials said Thursday during the first day of a two-day government cloud computing forum.
“Right now, when government CIOs want to go to the cloud, it’s kind of a free-for-all, and they have to think of everything themselves,” NIST director Patrick Gallagher said in a brief interview. “We want to help provide a structure.”
Developing a roadmap, officials said, will help prioritize standards efforts, looking to remove perceived barriers to cloud adoption around security, interoperability, portability and reliability.
NIST’s Strategic Cloud Computing initiative will not solve all of risk managers’ problems. Each still has to do his or her homework to determine whether or not the concerns outweigh the benefits for the organization.
But this is a good start and should help.