Google Pursues Government Biz: Security Concerns Loom{0}
As chapter 5 talks about enterprise architecture and security Google plans on offering cloud services such as Google Apps to federal agencies starting in 2010. Google has assured the cloud services to be entirely compliant with the requirements of the Federal Information Security Management Act (FISMA). According to Business Week, Google announced its plans at a cloud computing event in California, in which it was clarified that the government services would be hosted on Google’s data centers that are complaint with government regulations. A service provider is required to have a FISMA certification in order to sell to federal agencies.
However, for those of you like me who do not know what cloud computing is I found a definition in Wikipedia. According to Wikipedia, cloud computing is a paradigm of computing in which dynamically scalable and often virtualized resources are provided as a service over the Internet. In other words, these services typically provide similar business applications online that are accessed from a web browser, while the software and data are stored on the servers.
One of Google’s executives assured that the government cloud service will be operated by individuals with the appropriate security clearances and all the government’s data will remain in the U.S.
According to Karen Evan, former de facto federal CIO under the Bush administration, one of the greatest advantages on using cloud services from Google could help federal agencies significantly reduce IT costs. However, many are very reluctant with the security and information assurance of using a cloud service.
The deal between Google and federal agencies could close depending on the result from the FISMA certification and accreditation that Google’s cloud services receive.
Viajayah, Jaikumar. (Sept. 17, 2009). Google Pursues Government Biz: Security Concerns Loom. BusinessWeek. Retrieved on Sept. 22, 2009 from http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/sep2009/tc20090917_122270.htm