Cloud Security and Privacy

Preface

In February 2008, I ran into Subra Kumaraswamy, of Sun Microsystems, at the quarterly meeting of the Electronic Crimes Task Force put on by the San Francisco office of the U.S. Secret Service. Subra and I have attended a number of these meetings, and we knew each other from similar, previous professional events. Both of us are information security practitioners, and that is a small world in Silicon Valley, where we both have lived and worked for many years. Subra asked what I was up to, and I told him I was considering writing a book on cloud computing and security.

Even in February 2008, the hype about cloud computing was very evident in Silicon Valley. Similarly, lots of concerns were being voiced about the apparent lack of (information) security provided in cloud computing. As Subra and I discussed, though, at that time no substantive or articulate information was available on this topic—hence my musings about writing a book on the subject. Subra told me that he too was spending time researching cloud computing and had failed to find any substantive or articulate information on the topic. I asked Subra whether he was interested in helping me write such a book, and he responded yes. (Having been through the anguish of writing a book previously, I was looking for some very competent help, and Subra certainly fits that description.) So began our book odyssey.

Originally, our effort was intended to be one chapter in another O’Reilly book on cloud computing. However, after we ...