Gartner on cloud security: 'Our nightmare scenario is here now'

Speaking on a panel at the Gartner conference, a number of CIOs acknowledged their prime concerns are about security in cloud computing.

June Hartley, CIO at the National Business Center of the U.S. Department of the Interior, said security requirements known as FISMA that the U.S. government uses for security compliance will likely be changed to meet the new world of private and public cloud computing. 

Casey Coleman, CIO at the General Services Administration and co-chair of what's known as the Federal Cloud Council, agreed, but both indicated there was no apparent barrier to that.

Sometimes there are some unexpected risks.

Sal Allavarpu, senior director, product marketing at Citrix Systems, a player in the virtualization market which has created virtual appliance versions of its Access Gateway, Branch Repeater and NetScaler security, network and application control appliances, says there are new security issues that arise in virtualization and cloud computing.