Great interview with crypto-legend Whitfield Diffie. Cryptography solutions are far-off, but much can be done in the near term, says Whitfield Diffie. Cloud computing services, such as Amazon's EC2 and Google Apps, are booming. But are they secure enough? Friday's ACM Cloud Computing Security Workshop in Chicago was the first such event devoted specifically to cloud security.
Speakers included Whitfield Diffie, a cryptographer and security researcher who, in 1976, helped solve a fundamental problem of cryptography: how to securely pass along the "keys" that unlock encrypted material for intended recipients.

Diffie, now a visiting professor at Royal Holloway, University of London, was until recently a chief security officer at Sun Microsystems. Prior to that he managed security research at Northern Telecom. He sat down with David Talbot, Technology Review's chief correspondent.

Technology Review: What are the security implications of the growing move toward cloud computing?

Whitfield Diffie: The effect of the growing dependence on cloud computing is similar to that of our dependence on public transportation, particularly air transportation, which forces us to trust organizations over which we have no control, limits what we can transport, and subjects us to rules and schedules that wouldn't apply if we were flying our own planes. On the other hand, it is so much more economical that we don't realistically have any alternative.

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