CLOUD COMPUTING

Cloud computing is all the rage. I have to admit that I don't understand much of the technical side of it. But the basic idea is that companies and individuals "outsource" their computer functions, both data and programmes, to a specialist provider with vast storage capacity (the "cloud"). When you want to use the computer, you simply download the relevant programme and data using the internet. As with other outsourcing functions, you hand over the running to experts (in return for a fee), and avoid the need for costly hardware, server rooms and other things. You don't need much more than a laptop with an internet connection.

Superficially, this is extremely attractive. Yet I must admit that I have deep suspicions that the benefits do not exceed the hidden costs. The biggest of these is the threat to security. Once the data is in the hands of the provider, you lose control of it. Each time you upload and download, the data passes through the - unregulated and unsecured - internet (yes, you can encrypt, but what small business or individual wants to do that all of the time just to get onto Facebook?). Providers are not 100% secure (think of Microsoft and its ubiquitous patches). And there is a small army of cyber criminals who are doing all they can to get their hands on your information. Nowadays they do that mainly by hacking or phishing, but in a cloud world, wouldn't it simply be easier to bribe a provider's data manager?

There are also jurisdictional issues. Is the data of a Danish company, handed over to a U.K. provider but stored on a server in India, covered by Danish, English or Indian law or a mix of them? What happens if data is "lost" (the loss of the tax records of half of the U.K. population spring to mind)? Who pays compensation and how is it calculated (the value of information can be wildly different to different people)? Will there be sufficient privacy safeguards when the provider can in principle oversee everything you do with a particular programme?

Techies will presumably say that they are well on the way to solving these problems, and that I am a stone-age neanderthal that just doesn't "get it". Well, I don't. As one fellow sceptic put it, you wouldn't give your personal tax data in an envelope to someone off the street, whom you had never met before. Yet it seems that when you upload your personal data to a server somewhere in cloudland, you are doing pretty much the same thing.

Walter Blotscher