It’s National Cyber Security Awareness Month! Of course you should be aware of cyber security every month. Intel has done an interesting page of cyber security suggestions at https://www-ssl.intel.com/content/www/us/en/security/lifehacks.html. Check it out.

I know it seems like I have been picking on Google for the last couple of posts, but they are such an easy target. This time, Google’s CIO, Ben Fried had some interesting things to say in an article written by Liz Gammes of All Thngs D. The article talks about how Google employees are insulated from what is used in the outside consumer world. Google’s mantra is that everyone should trust the cloud to handle their communications and data storage. Employees should collaborate and develop corporate strategy on the web rather than their own internal networks.

Now, Google follows its philosophy by using its own products, like Google Apps and Google Drive for their internal development in their internal cloud. But how does it feel about using other’s products, or the cloud in general? “The important thing to understand about Dropbox,” Fried said, “is that when your users use it in a corporate context, your corporate data is being held in someone else’s data center.” To put that in a real context, Google’s basic philosophy, from my understanding, is anything that is stored on Google’s servers is Google’s property. That may be a bit of an overstatement, but they do feel they have the right to mine your data in order to target ads to you. What is to prevent and Edward Snowden from coping your information and passing it to others? You are relying on Google to tell you that your data has been compromised, and it is because of a breach of their security. Can you say “lawsuit”?

This is not to say that Google is worse than any other cloud provider. They are open about their position on data mining and I am not saying that anyone else is data mining or not data mining. What I am saying is that moving your data to the cloud means that you are consciously giving up control of your information to someone else. You are trusting them to prevent anyone other than yourself from accessing, destroying or changing that data.

As the old consumer adage goes “Buyer beware”.