The Most Simple Explanation Of Cloud Computing Ever, From Google
Google’s Eran Feigenbaum
Google employs 450 full-time engineers to stop hackers and other snoopers from breaking into its data centers and cloud services. And today, Google published a report card of sorts on how well they are doing in those matters.
The new report explains how Google’s cloud computing services work and why they are safe (Edward Snowden be darned). For instance, Google’s cloud uses something called “perfect forward security,” a special way to use encryption designed to thwart snoopers like, say, the NSA.
The report is actually the result of a third-party audit done by Ernst & Young, Google security director Eran Feigenbaum told Business Insider. It’s part of a certification Google has earned that verifies its cloud is secure (known as the ISO 27001 certificate).
There are two layers to the report. One is published on Google’s website, available for everyone to see, which answers basic questions like where Googles stores data and if it scans its cloud customers data for advertising purposes (it doesn’t) and so on. The other is a more detailed report available only upon request under a non-disclosure agreement.
While there’s no real surprises in what Google publicly reveals about its cloud, Google is including two new services in its security certification: Hangouts and Google+. A lot of companies use Hangouts for videoconferencing meetings, and now Google can verify that such meetings are secure.
But our favorite part of the report was that Google PR sent us this photo with it, just for fun. It boils cloud computing down into a couple of words and lines. (Note the bottom legalese “Google confidential. Do not distribute.”)
What more do you need to know about cloud computing other than this?
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