Security expert says the Cloud is the way to go for B2B

David M Williams
Monday, 18 May 2009 13:55

Business IT - Security

While Dr Taher Elgamal is in Australia for AusCERT he took time to speak to iTWire about just why companies really ought to be looking to the cloud for business to business transactions.

Dr Elgamal is the man behind the SSL protocol and is presently in Australia to speak at AusCERT’s 2009 Asia Pacific Information Security conference.

I was intrigued by the fact Elgamal’s employer, Axway, implement software-as-a-service (SaaS) and cloud-based solutions to enterprises looking to conduct transactions with each other.

In the last twelve months “the cloud” has become an important focus for many software companies, yet seemingly with little take-up by big business.

I’m not surprised; I even shudder at the thought of having my own corporate data hosted elsewhere, let alone the entire application. To my mind, as interesting as cloud-based services and applications are, surely companies are reluctant to hand over their private data to someone else.

Dr Elgamal didn’t share my view, and in typical fashion, his responses indicated a depth of thought and philosophy behind his words.

Elgamal argues that the cloud is an interesting suite of things to deal with. “All things are connected to all things at this time,” he says. In fact, “even if you believe data is on your servers, it is on the cloud in some way. Someone has access to it, and someone else could get access through methods which may not be apparent.”

“Once you are doing business with people outside the organisation then you will be sharing data with other people. This implies your data will go out,” he continued, before delivering the crux. “You have to believe in your partner’s security.”

“It is easier to trust in an outsourced cloud server,” Elgamal stated.

“If they have the right security controls and security people and the whole community subscribe to that cloud service then you have the same levels of controls over the data as it moves around” rather than dealing with the problem of “many organisations, many people, many servers.”

Elgamal noted that in this modern day it is a rare business which does not share data with its suppliers or customers or other business partners in some way.

“I believe the cloud service type business model is going to be a very cost-effective way for a lot of people to do business with each other,” he said.