CloudLock Brings PCI Compliance Scan to Google Drive

CloudLock will announce its pattern matching engine for Google Apps customers on Tuesday, bringing Payment Card Industry (PCI) and other compliance requirements to Google Drive.
Available as a cloud service, the company’s engine “identifies, classifies, and secures very sensitive information, including Personally Identifiable Information (PII), Payment Card Industry (PCI) data and custom regular expressions…,” it said in a statement. CloudLock’s PII and PCI Compliance Scan identifies files containing Social Security numbers and credit card information, as well as product SKUs and postal codes.
“As more companies move to the cloud, more sensitive data follows, including PII and PCI data that is subject to auditing and compliance requirements,” said Gil Zimmermann, CEO and co-founder of CloudLock. “Customers now have a way to implement and enforce Acceptable Usage Policies; whether that entails securing sensitive data or preventing its dissemination to certain applications and users in the first place.”
CloudLock said the features in the new compliance scans came from customer requests. One such company, AMAG Pharmaceuticals, touts how the service keeps them on the right side of the law. Nathan McBride, vice president of IT at AMAG, said in a statement: “As a publicly traded pharmaceutical company, we face the challenge of complying with SOX and FDA regulations as well as protecting our IP. With CloudLock’s pattern matching engine, we’re able to identify PII as well as very sensitive data related to our intellectual property…”
Other customers were looking to allow cloud-based collaboration for staff, but still keep personally identifiable information out of the public domain.
Joe Fuller, VP/CIO, Dominion Enterprises, said, “We wanted to make things easier but we didn’t want our sensitive data being compromised. CloudLock gives the visibility we need to identify, classify, monitor and eliminate any employee’s risky sharing behavior in the Google Apps cloud.”

http://www.wired.com/cloudline/2012/06/cloudlock/

Cloud storage: How useful is Google Drive?

Did you know that you store a lot of your personal and official information on a cloud? Where do you think all the attachments in your web mail accounts are stored? However, when it comes to consciously storing data and accessing it, most of us prefer a USB flash drive or, if the data is sizeable, a portable hard disk drive (HDD). Now, Google Drive aims to change this since it is not just a warehouse, but also offers a bunch of applications.

Google Drive to get offline mode in five weeks

Sundar Pichai, senior vice president for Chrome and Apps at Google, stated that the Google Drive will get offline mode in five weeks.
On the sidelines of the D10 Technology summit, Pichai told 'All Things D' author Walt Mossberg that Google's online storage service (Drive) will get offline support in five weeks from now. That means we can anticipate the offline mode in the first week of July.
Google Drive is one of the online storage service based on cloud servers, allowing users to upload content anywhere through web or dedicated apps meant for PC and mobiles. Though Google Drive may appear bit less glamorous than other online storage services, the company plans to bring offline storage for the same.

The Google Docs is already slotted under the Google Drive umbrella and already offered offline support. Now Google Drive will get offline mode after five weeks. Dropbox already offers offline storage and functionality.
Google Drive app is available from Google Play store and also for PC as well as Mac.

http://ibnlive.in.com/news/google-drive-to-get-offline-mode-in-five-weeks/263806-11.html

Livedrive CEO Says Paying for Google Drive or SkyDrive is Like Paying Tax

The CEO of Livedrive, one of the leading cloud storage services for consumers and small business, today posted a blog post explaining why he is not worried by competition from Google Drive and Microsoft's SkyDrive. Both services offer cloud storage under a 'freemium' model - meaning that users can use a certain amount for free, and then have to pay if they want extra space. Livedrive has always offered services as a paid for product, with no free tier.
In the blog post, Andrew explains that, "Paid-for services like Livedrive can offer far better deals to paying users because we don’t have the cost of servicing millions of free users. When you have a freemium model you have to set the usage bar for paying quite low to make the numbers work... and the price has to be high because only small percentage of users will chose to pay."
Freemium is a popular marketing technique among web companies - allowing companies to take advantage of the viral and social nature of their large free users bases, with the expectation that some of their free users will become paying customers. Andrew argues that the paying customers of these services are paying far more than they need: "Paying for Dropbox, SkyDrive or Google Drive is like paying tax. Our message is simple – by all means enjoy a free service if it meets your needs, but if you’re going to pay, then come to a paid for service like Livedrive."
Andrew - who previously founded the UK's largest hosting provider, Fasthosts - explains how a similar pattern has been seen in both the internet services and hosting industries. In both of these segments free players dominated the early market, but then as the market matured customers grew used to paying for them. Andrew wrote:
"When I started Fasthosts in 1998 most people thought web hosting would be a free service – the likes of AOL and Geocities were offering free hosting and it wasn’t unusual to find professionals and small businesses alike using them. Then, as the market matured the word on the street was that ‘only prosumers will pay for web hosting’. What actually happened is that as the Internet grew people’s needs grew and users had all sorts of preferences – in the case of web hosting that meant things like support, speed, domain names, server features etc. Now, even a home user who just wants a website to rent out his holiday home will most likely be using a decent, good value, paid for service as opposed to a one size fits all freebie."
Livedrive are an award winning UK-based provider of online backup and cloud storage services, providing solutions for consumers, small business and resellers.
Andrew Michael's full blog post is available here:
http://blog.livedrive.com/2012/06/freemium-vs-paid-a-different-perspective-on-cloud-storage/

PCI compliance scan for Google Drive

CloudLock announced a pattern matching engine that identifies, classifies, and secures sensitive information, including Personally Identifiable Information (PII), PCI data and custom regular expressions, allowing Google Apps customers to address auditing and compliance requirements in Google Drive.

PII is data that can be used to uniquely identify, contact, or locate a single individual. CloudLock’s PII and PCI Compliance Scan allows customers to identify files containing Social Security Numbers, Credit Card information as well as any custom patterns/regex that they can define such as Product SKUs, postal codes or any other pattern.

“As more companies move to the cloud, more sensitive data follows, including PII and PCI data that is subject to auditing and compliance requirements. With CloudLock’s pattern matching engine, customers can identify data containing PII, classify it as such and take action. Customers now have a way to implement and enforce Acceptable Usage Policies; whether that entails securing sensitive data or preventing its dissemination to certain applications and users in the first place.” said Gil Zimmermann, CEO and Co-founder of CloudLock.

Enterprises handling sensitive data, including personally identifiable information, have a responsibility to protect access to this information regardless of whether the information is kept on-premises or in a cloud-based provider.

Moving to the cloud doesn’t remove this responsibility, nor does it shift it solely to the cloud provider– enterprise security policies must be extended to cloud-based information and we need to be able to show compliance with these policies,” said Neil MacDonald, vice president and Gartner Fellow.

http://www.net-security.org/secworld.php?id=13092

Google Intros 2nd-Gen Chromebook, Chromebox

On Tuesday Google announced the launch of two new 2nd-generation Chrome OS products: the Samsung Series 5 Chromebook laptop and the Samsung Series 3 Chromebox desktop. They're based on Intel Core processors and feature support for hardware accelerated graphics, a built-from-scratch multi-touch trackpad, and a boot time of less than seven seconds.
"This is the next step in our journey toward an always-new computing experience focused on speed, simplicity and security," said Caesar Sengupta, Director of Product Management at Google. "This next-generation hardware from Samsung based on Intel processors and hardware-accelerated software delivers nearly three times the performance of the first-generation Chromebooks. With a new, app-centric user interface rolling out today and thousands of available web apps, we couldn’t be more excited about this evolution."
The Chromebook arrives in two flavors: Wi-Fi only (XE550C22-A01) and Wi-Fi + 3G (XE550C22-H01). The tech specs include a 12.1-inch screen (1280 x 800), a dual-core Intel Celeron 867 processor clocked at 1.3 GHz, 4 GB of SoDIMM RAM, a 16 GB SSD, an integrated Intel HD Graphics 3000 GPU, a built-in 1MP HD webcam, 802.11 a/b/g/n connectivity, and a battery life of up to 6 hours. Ports include 2 USB 2.0, a 4-in-1 memory card slot, a DP++ port (2560 x 1600), Gigabit Ethernet and more.
The Series 3 Chromebox (XE300M22-A01) can be connected to up to two 30-inch displays simultaneously. It packs a dual-core Intel Celeron B840 processor clocked at 1.9 GHz, 4 GB of SoDIMM RAM, a 16 GB SSD, 802.11 a/b/g/n connectivity, Gigabit Ethernet and an Intel HD Graphics 3000 GPU. Ports include six USB 2.0, two DP++ display out ports (2560 x 1600) and a combined headphone/microphone jack.
"The new Samsung Series 5 Chromebook and Series 3 Chromebox provide the rapid, convenient and ever-improving computing experience that was so well-received in our first Chromebook," said Todd Bouman, vice president of marketing at Samsung Enterprise Business Division. "As the world’s first Chromebox, the Series 3 provides users with the Chromebook’s ease-of-use in a compact desktop product, which easily integrates with their existing accessories."
Google's blog on Tuesday talks about the updates in Chrome OS including a revamped media player and a built-in photo editor and uploader so that users can easily play and manage personal media collections. Google Drive is now seamlessly integrated with the File Manager and will support offline access with the next release of Chrome OS in six weeks. Google Docs offline support is also rolling out over the next few weeks.
"We’ve released eight stable updates over the past year, adding a number of major features and hundreds of improvements to all Chromebooks through our seamless auto-update mechanism," Google adds. "There’s a lot more on the way, so all you need to do is sit back and enjoy the benefits of the (always) new computer."
The company added that it's expanding the Chrome Zone experience centers in the United States, available for hands-on trials in select Best Buy stores in the coming weeks. The new Chromebook and Chromebox can be purchased now through Google's online retail partners in the U.S. and U.K., and in other select countries over the coming weeks.
As for pricing, the Wi-Fi only Samsung Series 5 Chromebook 550 costs $449.99 USD, whereas the Wi-Fi + 3G model costs $549.99 USD. The Chromebox is a mere $329.99 USD.

Google Drive: Cloud service or emerging OS? | Google Drive News

Google Drive is a free synching and file storage service that is the foundation for a comprehensive cloud service. Google’s big cloud initiative is starting to form more cohesively. 

Cloud Computers: Samsung developed google Chromebox and Chromebook computers are purely cloud terminals

Is Google Drive aiming to be the best cloud solution or is it a new OS in the making?
Google has always been about cloud computing. Their popular services like Picasa image sharing and gMail have always been server-based cloud apps that were accessible from any connected computer. Google Docs, their version of Microsoft Office, was likely a web-based cloud service that offered a free suite of applications such as a word processor, spreadsheet, database and presentation software that could work on virtually any computer and for free!

The best feature about Google Docs was the collaborative nature. Documents can be worked on by multiple users concurrently and in real time. If any of those computers fail, get lost or are stolen, then the documents are safely stored in the cloud, accessible from any terminal. Google Docs is now known as Google Drive.

Google Drive has been around for roughly a month. Most users gravitate towards the service because as an extension of Google Docs, it is a convenient and easy to use system, specially for collaborating on documents as well as sharing files so that they are accessible from various devices.
Google Drive gives users 5GB of free storage which can be expanded to 25GB for a nominal monthly fee of US $ 2.50.

The Chromebox features an Intel Core processor, 4GB of RAM and uses the cloud for storage

Google Drive also allows users to download desktop clients (it is available for Mac and PC)  which places some files on their computers. The desktop client synchronizes remotely with the server version so users can maintain the lastest iteration of the documents they are working on locally and on the cloud.
They announcement today that a new version of Google’s Chrome OS will be accompanying new hardware from Samsung in the form of a a Chromebox desktop PC and a new and improved version of the Chromebook.
I tested last year’s Google Chromebook as a personal machine and used it (or, rather tried to use it) as my mobile computer for a month. While the browser basedOS was fast and seemed capable of handling basic computing tasks, I found working with documents quite frustrating.
Without any ‘offline mode’ it was impossible to work on Google Docs documents away from a WiFi connection. I also encountered various issues with the actual cloud service being down or inaccessible. This made it impossible for me to do my work or access my files.
The experience just felt too much like amateur hour and I could not see this solution being used in businesses or mission critical situations.
Since then, Google has bolstered Google Docs and introduced Google Drive. It has also updated Chrome OS and released these new notebooks and desktops that all seem to fit into this growing ecosystem. What’s Your Tech? Is a cheaper  and cloud connected alternative to Windows and Mac an attractive solution for you or is cloud computing for the birds?