Thread: The Future of Cloud Computing and Business Risk

In light of Parler recently being kicked off the Amazon servers, this has started to greatly concern me in that most of our software that we use today is trending to web host technology and data storage.

Technology wise, this is all very sound and reliable however the recent actions of Amazon would seem to indicate that there is a risk that has not been considered and that is access to the Cloud servers being based on idealogy.

There is also the rumor, don't know if it is true or not that the Parler database was dumped.

Politics aside of Parler, Amazon is a corporate entity and does have the right to operate their business as they see fit.

What greatly concerns me with this monkey house feces fight is that there now appears to be the real possibility that political views and or affiliations can be grounds for being denied Cloud services. This in essence would be akin to putting a paddle lock on a businesses front door. It is also dangerously close to extortion in that you need to uphold the values of the owners of the server farms.

To me this seems to be much too Orwellian in its nature to be healthy for business or society in the long view.

in before this turns into another political clusterfuck.

Several of us have been saying for years that cloud services are a nonstarter for a serious business. If it's on someone else's computer, they have all the control, all the power. If you're using an Autodesk product to manufacture something that they decide they don't like, they can terminate your business, unless you can instantly pivot to another software.

I'm not too sure how serious a risk denial of cloud service is for a business, although based on other actions taken against firearms related businesses I suspect the cloud ban could extend to them, defense related business, police equipment and any number of things.

Prior to today and reading your post I always considered the dangers of cloud computing to be network interruptions, server fires, or data theft from breaches. You have raised some interesting points and I think cloud contracts may need to be revised to add a clause saying that no service will be denied for political reasons and if they do discontinue service they must guarantee preservation of data and cooperate with transfer to another vendor.

One possible bright spot may be that thoughts such as already expressed here may cause outfits like Amazon to rethink mixing business and politics before they lose customers in droves. You can't be the only people rethinking cloud computing after recent events.

Originally Posted by Ziggy2

access to the Cloud servers being based on idealogy.


Politics aside ...

No politics, pure ideology.
Just look back 6 months or so ago, when Google and a few other companies denied access to facial recognition technology by law enforcement.

And note that some number of these incidents are driven by pressures internal to these companies - people working for AWS/Google etc., rather than government, etc. The best example being the various companies that withdrew from a DOD contract due to employee discontent. OK, but at what point does that become failure to maintain the strength of the US in the face of world threats? (Do they really think that China's state owned enterprizes won't build similar systems for China's military?) Assuming the republic survives, it will eventualy constrain some of this. Likewise if violent disorder continues in the cities long enough, they'll be punished one way or another, and high tech support for the police and the like will be viewed in a different light.

Seems to me that software service entities will face regulation, one way or another, going forward. And look more like phone carriers or the gas company - big utility essential to society, you get a lot of scrutiny. But that may take a long time.

#1 Ziggy2
"for being denied Cloud services"
It's worse than that.

A cashless society has been promoted for years.
The intention being, when the time is judged to be right, if you voted for Trump your credit cards will stop working.
Gas, electricity, water provision will stop.
Reduced to smoke signals when your phone and computing services stop.

Being in the horticultural business I had quick look at the health of the tree of liberty.
Time a few would-be tyrants were placed where they could do the most for the condition of the soil.
Needs doing now, before they become actual tyrants.

Actually been like that long before the net.....cash or cashless ...if you didnt pay the bill the service stopped.....So no difference there.

Not worried about the cloud in any way shape or form.
Bob

Nobody has to compute clouds any more ..you just google your zip code and spell out Weather...

I don’t run a business but see it from a gov side.

To its extreme China’s social credit system. Late November 2019 friend returned from China and explained how things changed since he’d last visited w the govt and everyone (Chinese) in the city was solely using either a card or cellphone to access almost all services - access to gate services, to purchase items, to get on a bus. He kept wondering, “What is this card everyone is using?” Explained he learned that if you run afoul of ideology by becoming known as disagreeable, or trying to access offensive-to-the-State websites or post in disagreement, they shut down your card and portions of your cellphone so you can no longer get on transportation, can no longer access your bank account. They suspend critical apps. Total conformance or You’re cut-off and on timeout for a while. No kidding. They actually put you on “timeout.” Such daily control naturally becomes reaffirming and then thought control. Other countries are studying the process and are acquiring guidance from the Chinese.

We’re only now beginning to identify the masters of tech finance etc infecting a version-light of such control.It’s already becoming normalized (take BLM for example) - after another generation not too many will remember the free’r days. Sure you can take your money and choose your services elsewhere, for now, but... the disease is spreading. A quest for social responsibility in business at the cost of profit is like the tension between liberty and equality.

Are any of you already trying to stay under the radar, feel repressed, and are becoming a little bit conformist to the ideological “shift?”

Like someone said: Back your stuff up and be ready to pivot for non disruption when it happens. In a different sense I’m already under the thumb and have had to make adjustments to themes about which I don’t agree.

If all the information is on your owned computers no way someone can hack in and steal your information. Of course this is only true if they are in house only and not connected to the net. CNC programs etc. You have to pay someone to prevent hackers and spam etc.
In theory having your stuff saved in the cloud is more secure and harder to hack into. The cloud has full time security people looking out for you.
Bill D

Originally Posted by Bill D

If all the information is on your owned computers no way someone can hack in and steal your information. Of course this is only true if they are in house only and not connected to the net. CNC programs etc.

If someone wants your data bad enough, they will most likely get it, even on an air-gapped system. If you're in a SCIF and your employees never mess up, you might be okay.

Originally Posted by Bill D

If all the information is on your owned computers no way someone can hack in and steal your information. Of course this is only true if they are in house only and not connected to the net. CNC programs etc. You have to pay someone to prevent hackers and spam etc.
In theory having your stuff saved in the cloud is more secure and harder to hack into. The cloud has full time security people looking out for you.
Bill D

I don't think that being hacked is as big of risk as perhaps being denied access to the servers that your data is on.

I don't care what you think of Parler but Amazon denying servers to Parler with very short notice is a game changer in my opinion. Parler's main issue seemed to be on the wrong political side. There are currently no legal precedents for these type of situations. The server owners are an individual business entity and do currently have specific rights in determining whom they will contract to do business with.

What I see as a danger is that many of us that do work for the defense industry and or the firearms industries, what if the owners of the cloud services that we are using now get locked because it is determined that we are not a satisfactory business to fit the political ideology. Worse yet is that we don't know exactly which servers are data and apps are running on.

With cloud services, the issue is no longer just the data but the actual applications that we are using. Before the advent of cloud computing, the data and the software which we had at least a quasi-permanent software license. We now have monthly software subscriptions which means we no longer have a perpetual license. So how can we protect ourselves from such a situation?

To me it would appear that we should not be using key applications that are business depends on if they are cloud based or else be prepared for the possibility of service denial.

Originally Posted by Ziggy2

To me it would appear that we should not be using key applications that are business depends on if they are cloud based or else be prepared for the possibility of service denial.

In my view service denial is not as much of a risk as there are legal avenues one can take ( as is the case with Parler apparently )
But, the service provider can ALWAYS change the rules to something the user may or may not be able to abide by.
IOW, once you've signed up for a SAAS, you will have to put up with EVERY change the provider makes, or else loose the service and start all over elsewhere.

QT: Zigggy2 : [What I see as a danger is that many of us that do work for the defense industry and or the firearms industries, what if the owners of the cloud services that we are using now get locked because it is determined that we are not a satisfactory business to fit the political ideology. Worse yet is that we don't know exactly which servers are data and apps are running on.]

Or if you like dogs and the dog lobby wants to stop people from locking up animals in a house all day when they should only be free.

Yes, there are people who think that and just about every exact opposite of what others think is normal.

Get locked out of the cloud because you drive or condone the use of a gas guzzler SUV.

How much would some countries pay for our military secrets that are up in a cloud?

Originally Posted by rrrgcy

I don’t run a business but see it from a gov side.

To its extreme China’s social credit system. Late November 2019 friend returned from China and explained how things changed since he’d last visited w the govt and everyone (Chinese) in the city was solely using either a card or cellphone to access almost all services - access to gate services, to purchase items, to get on a bus. He kept wondering, “What is this card everyone is using?” Explained he learned that if you run afoul of ideology by becoming known as disagreeable, or trying to access offensive-to-the-State websites or post in disagreement, they shut down your card and portions of your cellphone so you can no longer get on transportation, can no longer access your bank account. They suspend critical apps. Total conformance or You’re cut-off and on timeout for a while. No kidding. They actually put you on “timeout.” Such daily control naturally becomes reaffirming and then thought control. Other countries are studying the process and are acquiring guidance from the Chinese.

Just a short rebuttal - your friend has his head up his ass. I hate wechat and alipay and refuse to use them. At every subway stop there are machines that take money and give tokens, or you can buy (with cash) a monthly card. All the buses take money. Trains take money. Hotels take money. Stores take money. Restaurants take money, I do it every single day at lunch and sometimes dinner (terrible cook here.) Airplanes probably do but credit card is easier, and credit cards are not alipay or wechat, they've been around for decades and you all use them over there in the land of the brave home of the free. In fact, credit cards can be controlled in exactly the same way. Some restaurants have been trying to go cashless because they can hire fewer people. I turn around and leave. I've noticed some (KFC over by the nanjing xi lu subway station, for example) put one cash register BACK after trying the totally cashless shit. Which makes KFC smarter than the Golden Gate Bridge, which would rather lose $100,000 a month than actually pay one toll taker.

Yes, that crap is stupidly popular, especially among the smartphone-obsessed youth. But the truth is, you don't need it. I refuse to use it and have no problems anywhere (except sometimes getting change, and the ongoing fights with the girlfriend).

Out of all the people I know or have ever known, I can think of one case where 'social credit' became an issue, and that was a guy who mistakenly used the character for "bomb" in an sms text. His writing skill was not as good as he thought His phone shut off and he had to go in to the China Mobile office to get it turned back on. So there is a level of filtering, but nothing like what you people who have never been here, never used any of these services, and in general know nothing but fantasies spout.

Paranoia strikes deep, into your heart it will creep ...

All that said, I'd never use the cloud. The personal computer was hugely popular because it freed people from the cloud. If we were going to stick with the fricking cloud, we may as well have just kept using ADM-3 terminals. The cloud is a menace, nobody who was stuck with terminals could ever want to go back there. People who promote that shit are nuts.

If the Photobcket fiasco didn't teach people anything, what can I say ? Dumb as a box of rocks, eh ?

Originally Posted by Bill D

If all the information is on your owned computers no way someone can hack in and steal your information. Of course this is only true if they are in house only and not connected to the net. CNC programs etc. You have to pay someone to prevent hackers and spam etc.
In theory having your stuff saved in the cloud is more secure and harder to hack into. The cloud has full time security people looking out for you.
Bill D

Bill, you are a smart guy. I can't believe you said that. The cloud is extraordinarily dangerous. Once your data leaves your possession and control, you can only consider it public. If you use a third party for critical services, those services are at serious risk. Having worked my entire business career as a IT Professional, the only secure connection you can make is a sneaker net and a playbox. Anything else is insecure. Using the cloud is like installing a natural gas back-up generator and relying on the public supply of natural gas. It's stupid.

IMHO anything that can be remotely accessed can be hacked. The hack in and stealing social security numbers from retailers is a good example of that. Who knows what has been hacked already.
When the sheets hit the fan we may be controlling Chinese submarines... or they may be controlling ours.

I had a bank line of credit card hacked for $60 worth of mail.com charges. If I had not checked I would have been out $60. I think just about nothing is completely safe.

Like having the very best locks ..and along comes the very best lockpicker...

Originally Posted by michiganbuck

Like having the very best locks ..and along comes the very best lockpicker...

When I was about eighteen I did a bunch of stuff for Bill van Zee, Central Safe, Oakland California. He did vaults; when B of A had a malfunction, he was the one they called to open the safe. Small business, big jobs, drawn-out timeframes, so he was either rich or penniless. I didn't understand that then, but do now.

His wife had keys to the house, but Bill had no keys at all. He'd pick everything. It was faster. When they'd try to shut off the water or gas, he'd just take their lock and ditch it. I think PG&E finally threatened to pour a yard of concrete over the meter if he did it again