Avoid the Facepalm: Cloud Security vs. Security in the Cloud

One of the slides I added to my Black Hat presentation at the last minute can be seen below:

Introducing the slide, I remarked that its important to differentiate the two:

• “Cloud Security”: this refers to the security of “the Cloud”, or more usefully, of a given cloud.  Stepping back, we can use the term to refer to the general security aspects of Cloud Computing.
• “Security in the Cloud”: this is about delivering security services via “the cloud”.

Back in April 2008, when I was naming this blog, I initially planned to call it ‘Security in the Cloud’ but after 30 minutes of Googling and reading, it became evident that I was mistaken as this term had already been adopted to refer to services delivered via the Internet (primarily Security MSSPs).  Hence cloudsecurity.org was born.

Having said all that, I’m now seeing newer “security in the Cloud” providers referring to themselves as ‘the Cloud Security Leader’ which only serves to add to the confusion.

[This post was inspired by "The Real Meaning of Cloud Security Revealed" by Lori MacVittie]