Cloud will rain on security vendors

Trade

The growing trend of online security being offered over the cloud will be a major disruptive force in the industry, according to Philippe Courtot, chairman of Qualys.

Speaking at the RSA 2009 conference in San Francisco, Courtot said the move to a cloud model for security was essential, since current security methods were failing. Emphasising his point, Courtot said that five years ago it would have taken 30 days to address half of a network’s vulnerabilities while today, according to a recent Qualys study, that figure had barely dropped to 29.5 days.

“Something has to change,” he told delegates. “The cloud is going to be very disruptive but it offers some key advantages. One big advantage of the software-as-a-service model is you don’t need to do a complex proof of concept; you can try and buy”.

“It also gives users the ability to switch, as long as you can take your data and run.”

This would be highly disruptive to security product and service vendors, he continued. In the future, the most important purchasers of security products would be cloud suppliers, not enterprises, Courtot predicted.

However, several hurdles need to be overcome before the cloud model is complete, he said. Above all, the industry needs a secure browser. He praised the recent return of competition to the browser market and said that we would soon see a robust browser that could provide stability and security.

For chief security officers, the road ahead is more complex, since they will have to both manage existing systems and learn about the new cloud architecture. Nevertheless, security professionals would still be needed to be the final arbiter of any switch to a cloud model, Courtot said.

Some industry watchers, including security guru Bruce Schneier, dispute the claim that cloud computing will be a game-changer. He told vnunet.com: “Cloud computing isn’t anything new; it’s the old client/server model,” he said.

“Fundamentally, when you deal with computers in any form, you have to trust your vendors, whether it’s your operating system vendors or your application vendors or your service vendors.”

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