Does Adoption of Cloud Computing Shift Cyber Liability Risk?

The rapid adoption of cloud computing has attracted companies that seek to lower their information technology costs. At the same time, it is reported that there has been an increase in data loss and an increase in cyber-liability claims against companies ‘ some of it from an increase in criminal acts like hacking. But the biggest vendors in the cloud computing industry want to push the risk of penetration of their systems onto their customers adopting the technology ‘ those far removed from control of the hardware and network platforms on which cloud computing relies. This shift of cyber liability risk away from the cloud computing platform providers and onto their customers may be a result of competitive pricing in the cloud computing platform service industry. Some in the industry consider the liability risk associated with retail customer data disclosure to be approximately $2,000 per customer data record. This is a large number when one considers that corporate customer databases could easily have 100,000 data records with names, addresses, credit card numbers and other information. Therefore, cloud computing customers have to consider how to ameliorate the risk of cyber liability despite having outsourced their computer infrastructure to the cloud.