Interview with Prof. Dr. Eberhard von Faber, T-Systems

Professor, sorry, we're gonna do this in English. Okay. would you please, is it possible to do cloud computing in a secure fashion? I think so. As all other deployment models for it services also cloud computing can be made secure. It is a question of the requirements and of the measures being taken to make it secure. How much effort does it require?

Oh, that's not easy answer because it depends on the secure on the requirements the organization has, if you simply store data, which is only for whatever purpose, which is not very critical, then you have a much lower security requirements level than compared to the fact, to the situation that you have very confidential data, where you have to demonstrate compliance or very critical data, which is from taking from development or whatever. Is there any single way single technology that will help to make this cloud secure? Are we talking about a mix of technologies here? Definitely.

We are. We are talking about mix. So first of all, we have to integrate most of the ICT security technology we use to integrate and traditional I C T environments. In addition to that, we have to add something which is more cloud specific. As an example, we have shared system virtualization and we have to make sure that in a multi-tenant environment, the data of different user organizations are separated. So this needs to be added, but we have to have a mix.

And again, that depends on the requirements and the deployment model and business model being used. It sounds like securing the cloud is more, it will take more effort than many expect. It will probably also be more expensive.

Of course, the whole rationale of doing cloud computing is you can cut. It costs is the added cost of securing the cloud, going to sort of eat up the cost benefit. I don't think so.

It is you, you are right that there there's a need for additional measures, but not only for security, you need to add virtualization layers, for instance, that is extra costs for the it, but this is being integrated to lower the costs for the ITC service and the same with security measures. You need to add something to make it secure, but you can do it in a way that we will still see benefits of scale, including cost reductions, Many CIOs, still fear cloud computing. Is this a rational response or is it more an emotional response?

Oh, that's hard to answer. I think it's, it can be both. And there is no clear, clear answer because there are different clouds. There are different providers.

It's one, one thing. There are different deployment models. That's the other. And I would expect that there are different implementations and last but not least there are different requirements. So the answer could be yes or no, or it is appropriate. It's not appropriate. It depends on a larger number of factors. And there's no easy answer for that.