When I was in 7th grade, I played the trombone in the Gooding, Idaho, Jr. High band – or at least tried to play it.  Once, we participated in a music festival where I played a solo rendition of the soaring anthem, “Jerusalem,” in front of a judge.  When I finished the piece, she remarked, “the trombone can be a beautiful instrument.”  I was devastated of course, and was somewhat relieved to hang up my trombone, so to speak, when we moved to a tiny town without a band the next year.

I was reminded of that incident this morning when I read a Mashable article, “Top 5 Misconceptions about the Cloud,” sponsored by Western Digital.  The fifth “misconception” was “You Can’t Beef Up Security on the Cloud.”  In my mind’s eye, I could almost see my trombone judge saying, “The cloud can be a secure place.”

So what’s the problem?  Much like a 7th grader’s ill-conceived belief that he could impress a judge with little practice and poor technique, the article’s overly simplistic recommendation for bolstering cloud security was “You can use behavior-based key management servers and encryption key management to give your files an extra layer of protection.”

Cloud security entails much, much more than that.

I can accept that cloud based solutions can be well-secured, but we must not be complacent or expect great results with little effort.