Richard Chow - PARC blog

Cloud computing and security

21 December 2009 | Richard Chow

You can’t avoid the cloud computing topic these days. As usual, the extreme viewpoints are the most visible -- cloud computing is either marketing hype, or game-changing. If you turn to security experts, it’s either “nothing new” or a “focal point". While there’s some truth in each viewpoint, it’s a little hard to untangle what’s really going on. An oft-quoted survey from IDC reports security is the biggest concern with cloud computing. We did our own series of interviews with different members of the cloud ecosystem, and asked them to identify the security/privacy issues and the concerns of their customers.

Tempted by location apps?

5 November 2009 | Richard Chow

Privacy should be the biggest concern for users of location-based social networking apps like Foursquare, Google Latitude, Loopt, and others. Will these companies store and analyze your location traces to figure out what ads to show you as part of their business model? You can deduce a lot about people from their locational traces: where they sleep and work and play, what stores and restaurants they like, who they spend time with, more.