Truly secure clouds? Possible but not likely say Georgia Tech boffins

Georgia Tech has added itself to the chorus, nay, throng of voices warning that poorly-implemented cloud computing and the world of BYO mobile devices are threats to enterprise security.

In its Emerging Cyber Threats 2014 report, GT's Information Security Center joins World+Dog in noting that the Snowden NSA whistle-blowing has concentrated minds wonderfully on the question “who's reading my cloud?”

However, trying to secure what leaves the premises comes at a cost, says GTISC director Wenke Lee: “Encryption in the cloud often impacts data accessibility and processing speed. So we are likely to see increased debate about the tradeoffs between security, functionality and efficiency.”

Even if a company bites the bullet and encrypts everything going to the cloud services it has bought on contract with an enterprise provider, the report notes that employees' individual use of “shadow” services like Dropbox, Box.com and Google's sharing services can undermine that security (although The Register notes that Google began encrypting enterprise level cloud data in August, and with more recent NSA revelations, the encryption deployment will probably expand).

In the mobile space, GTISC points to the university's own work on AppStore vetting bypasses and malicious chargers. No matter how robust vendors' security models might be, GTISC says this only deals with large-scale attacks: targeted attacks that can be used against smaller groups or individuals still remain a threat.

GTISC also highlights the burgeoning enthusiasm for the Internet of Things as an embryonic threat for the future. The report notes that the simplicity of IoT devices can be an attack point. Detecting, for example, counterfeit devices in an IoT environment is resource-intensive, the report notes, which works against the low-power and simplicity sought by device makers.

In the industrial space, the report also criticises system designers for failing to build defences against side-channel vulnerabilities such as timing attacks. ®