Infosecurity.US

From the When It Rains It Pours Department: TechCrunch is reporting the astonishing lack of prudent enterprise level disaster recovery (or at the very least, business continuity) controls at a cloud computing backup company [the key word here is backup]. In news, from earlier in the week, Carbonite, a so-called on-line backup provider, suffered significant equipment failures, leading to the reported loss of customer data.  In essence, the company blames, [and is suing] it’s hardware vendor  – Promise Technology – and a consultancy monikered Interactive Digital Systems,  rather than focusing on it’s own less-than-stellar planning. More information, including a short snippet of the original post, appears after the jump.

Trust the cloud? Do you really trust your data, whether personal or business, to companies floating around in the cloud? Confidentiality, integrity, and availability of the data is paramount to the users and customers of these so-called ‘cloud computing” companies. The online backup firms that promote the ease of backing up your data via the net fail, apparently, to provide the three basic tenets of data assurance. How long can they keep up the charade?

From the original TechCrunch post by Robin Wauters:   “Online Backup Company Carbonite Loses Customers Data, Blames And Sues Suppliers (Updated)“

The danger of storing your data in the cloud, part n. VC-backed online backup and storage provider Carbonite has lost data of 7,500+ customers who relied on the company to keep their files safe, The Boston Globe unveiled over the weekend. (note: see updates below, at this point we cant be sure anymore if any data was actually lost or not)… “The newspaper gets the information from a lawsuit that was filed by the Boston company last week, alleging that two of its service providers sold it over $3 million worth of defective hardware, linking this to the loss of their customers data and as a result, bringing substantial damage to its business and reputation…” “Carbonite is seeking unspecified damages against Promise Technology, which it is suing for unfair and deceptive business practices, fraud and breach of contract, as well as system integrator and IT consultancy firm Interactive Digital Systems (for breach of warranty). The latter company advised and implemented Promise Technology solutions, which were supposed to monitor multiple computer hard drives in order to assure that they were functioning properly…”

• Online backup is the Trojan Horse of the cloud (johngannonblog.com)
• Not So Fast Carbonite (kennykellogg.com)
• Is Carbonite’s Lawsuit Over Lost Data A Bad Idea? (techdirt.com)