There are a lot of great reasons to use the cloud for storage; anywhere, anytime, any-device access to your information is a great advantage for those of us not chained to a desk(top). But there are so many different services, how could anyone know which one to pick?

I’ve gone through a lot of the offerings out there and made some attempt to categorize them into business or consumer. Then I weeded out the fly-by-night file sharing sites which are more of a way to pirate music than store it. Then I scoured the web for reviews of the sites (it might have taken less time to review some of these myself) and again eliminated a bunch of services that had widespread complaints.

One aspect of cloud storage that I find particularly interesting is the commoditization of hardware, software, and the services built on top of them. Because the prices on the hardware and the bandwidth have come down so much in the past 5 years (it would have been unthinkable to save music on some server out there on the Internet 10 years ago), the cloud storage market has grown dramatically.

This commoditization makes sense if you think about it. Hard drives themselves have decreased in price to where you could get a terabyte SATA drive for $70. Granted, we’re talking about much larger scale than a single drive, but you could buy a 3u rack mountable server with 24 multi-terabyte drives in it for under $6,000. I remember that on my first server I installed a 100 MB (MB, not GB!) drive for $1500, plus we needed 2 to run RAID 0. Just looking at those numbers, it’s easy to see how the hardware commoditization has driven down the price of cloud storage.

In order to test my theory, I spoke with Brent Miller of ZT Systems, a reputable commodity server manufacturer. I shared my theory with Brent and asked him what he thought of it. His immediate response was, “You just might be right. For a long time everyone was talking about using the cloud for processing large volumes of data. Lately, we’re seeing a lot of action around cloud storage. One of our most popular build outs is a 2u storage server packed with 2 SSDs and 24 hard drives.”

So, I wasn’t that far off with my theory. I thought the most popular configuration would be a 3u server, but I’m off by a u!



Richmond, Virginia – July 27, 2010 – The Open Security Foundation, providing independent, accurate, detailed, current, and unbiased security information to professionals around the world, announced today that it has launched Cloutage (cloutage.org) that will bring enhanced visibility and transparency to Cloud security. The name Cloutage comes from a play on two words, Cloud and Outage, that combine to describe what the new website offers: a destination for organizations to learn about cloud security issues as well as a complete list of any problems around the globe among cloud service providers.

The new website is aimed at empowering organizations by providing cloud security knowledge and resources so that they may properly assess information security risks related to the cloud. Cloutage documents known and reported incidents with cloud services while also providing a one-stop shop for cloud security news and resources.

“When speaking with individuals about the cloud, to this point it has been a very emotional conversation. People either love or hate the cloud,” says Jake Kouns, Chairman, Open Security Foundation. “Our goal with Cloutage is to bring grounded data and facts to the conversation so we can have more meaningful discussions about the risks and how to improve cloud security controls.”

Cloutage captures data about incidents affecting cloud services in several forms including vulnerabilities that affect the confidentiality and integrity of customer data, automatic update failures, data loss, hacks and outages that impact service availability. Data is acquired from verifiable media resources and is also open for community participation based on anonymous user submissions. Cloud solution providers are listed on the website and the community can provide comments and ratings based on their experiences. Cloutage also features an extensive news service, mailing lists and links to organizations focused on the secure advancement of cloud computing.

“The nebulous world of cloud computing and the security concerns associated with it confuses many people, even IT and security professionals,” says Patrick McDonald, a volunteer on the Cloutage project. “We want a clearinghouse of information that provides a clear picture of the cloud security issues.”

About Open Security Foundation
Open Security Foundation (OSF) is a 501(c)(3) non-profit public organization founded and operated by information security enthusiasts. OSF exists to empower all types of organizations by providing knowledge and resources so that they may properly detect, protect, and mitigate information security risks. For more information or to support the efforts, please visit www.opensecurityfoundation.org.