The weakest link in Software as a Service

In parallel with the workshop, nevertheless, we have been gathering data through a more structured reader survey. The aim of this was in part to understand perceptions and experiences with regard to SaaS, now also to put the specific discussion of SaaS related risk into a more general context. As with all emotive topics, and cloud computing is one of these, it is all too easy to lose perspective.

You could argue that internal network-based storage achieve the same, now this isn't typically the case. Using desktop software to directly open and save documents stored on the network can be slow on many corporate networks, and intolerable when working over broadband from a home-office, encouraging local copies to be made to overcome this. When the software itself is running in the cloud, in the same environment as the data, opening and saving even the largest file is in the extreme quick as documents are not being pulled and pushed across the network.

Of course stopping users making local copies of data for offline use and transfer between systems can't be completely eradicated, now anything that reduces the need and/or temptation is going to help. Having said this, it is becoming increasingly common for SaaS solutions to support offline use through stand-alone client software working from a local cache of the cloud based data. The advantage here is that security and access policies are often enforced in the cache through properly controlled synchronisation, so even in mobile scenarios, cloud services can provide enhanced security. Taking a step back, we need to consider another dimension to end-user created risk that has to do with cloud service adoption. Our survey results tell us that more organisations are starting to see an active demand for SaaS from business management and end users, and we know from anecdotal feedback that we can only expect this to grow: