Early this week I attended the media launch of Data Sovereignty and the Cloud – a white paper from the University of New South Wales’ Cyberspace Law and Policy centre.
The event was refreshingly free of a lot of the hype or hysteria that cloud computing events usually lead to. I’ve covered some of the panel session’s discussion for Business Spectator.
One thing that stood out in the presentation was the Ten Commandments of Cloud Computing which are a good guide to what businesses owners, directors and executives need to consider when looking at online services.
Another refreshing aspect of the UNSW launch was the mature attitude towards risk – the overwhelming view of the panel, which included insurers, lawyers and academics, was that all technologies have an element of business risk and it’s a matter of identifying and managing those hazards.
Hopefully, we’ve moved on from the 1980s management view that risk is something to be eliminated at all costs. The result of that philosophy was just to shift risks into other, unforeseen areas.
The UNSW report on cloud risks is a weighty read, but it’s worthwhile if you want to get a realistic handle on exactly what the hazards are in moving to the cloud.
After all, if you don’t know what the risks are then you can’t identify, understand or manage them.