Cloud makes a strong assumption...
The cloud paradigm makes a strong assumption: Continuous access to the cloud services. This means that in addition to having security requirements for the cloud service itself, there are even more requirements on the security and reliability of the communication network. And here we have a serious issue.
In Carr's book, the big switch, he presented the analogy with the commodities of electrical power and the cloud. Cloud power will become equivalent to having access to electrical power through the power plug. It is an interesting analogy. Let's push it a little bit further. In the case of critical infrastructure, there is always a local UPS that compensates a potential electrical power outage. In the case of a 100% cloud based solution, at least in our current architectures, we do not have the equivalent part of this local UPS. Thus create your own equivalent of UPS, for instance in the case of critical data, you need to have them available locally, with secure sync in the cloud. Critical computations should be executable locally...
The issue of relying on a pervasive Internet connection is not limited to the cloud, it spreads all over our applications. More and more, they need external resources or info to work properly. Thus, the reliability and security of the communication infrastructure is key. And it relies on private companies...
