One comment (on this article) got me thinking:
I’m speaking to my business’s IT people about getting a “cold storage” option, even just a hard drive sitting in a desk drawer we update once a week. I don’t know how much I trust our cloud based database now.
Back when I was running Grand Union’s customer management function, I was fearful to the extent of paranoia about protecting our customers’ data privacy. So fearful was I that I made several changes (against massive resistance from IT) in our data storage process.
As with all such nascent programs of the time, when customers applied for a loyalty card, we collected their personal data (name and address) and applied a unique ID number embedded in the card’s magnetic strip (no chips back then). Like everyone else, we delegated this task to our card provider, who included that service, plus a direct mail service in their product offering. I wasn’t too comfortable about having our customers’ data in the hands of a third party, but you have to trust somebody sometimes, and I figured that they had more to lose in the mismanagement thereof, which would keep them honest.
Then I found out that our company’s IT department had ordered the provider to send them those customer files over to us, as a “backup” and “security” measure (of course). I didn’t like having two sets of data out there, but being the new boy, I kept my trap shut.
Then I found out that Store Operations was in the process of setting up a little routine which would track our staff’s spending — all staff had cards issued to them (for the wrong reasons, by the way, but I’ll talk about that some other time). So I blew up at the Ops VP — the first time I had exploded at a senior member of upper management, but by no means the last — and uttered the words that became quite legendary at Grand Union.
“Let me make one thing quite clear. Just because we are housing the data, does not mean you can play with it. You know who owns the data? I DO. And only I will dictate how the data is to be used from now on.” (There were more words, calling them idiots for abusing our own staff when in fact we were getting free research from their behavior, but that too is a story for another time.)
The result of all this was that I took all the personal customer data off the mainframe, leaving only the unique IDs behind, and stored that data not on our department’s terminal — which of course was linked to IT — but on a stand-alone PC in my techie Kenny’s office, on which resided only the customer data (and IDs of course), and the necessary tools to manage it (I used Paradox as the database manager and query tool, and Quattro Pro as the spreadsheet program). Incidentally, the only way I got funding for the PC was by threatening to just buy one with my own money if I got turned down. The only way to get data off that PC was by diskette (remember them) and Jaz cassettes (once again, the best mass offline storage media at the time); and I had the only other Jaz drive in the company (and also the only other Quattro Pro software, but that was by choice because MS Excel was and still is an inferior product).
And absolutely everything was password-protected — only Kenny and I had admin privileges. It was unwieldy, and often frustrating, and time-consuming; but our data was secure, which was all that mattered to me. So when we were doing a direct-mail promotion to our customer-cardholders, Kenny and I would do the analysis, then send the promotional offer and list of customer IDs to our card provider to create the mail shot. (The “sending” of the promo details involved handing a Jaz cassette to our account executive to take back to their IT department: also unwieldy and time-consuming, but irrelevant to me. And the head of their IT department was a great friend of mine, so I trusted him to safeguard the data.)
And all that was in the mid-1990s, when data snooping was rudimentary, crude and easily blocked. Now? Fuggedabahtit.
I do know that had anyone in my department even suggested to me that I back up our data on some Internet-based “cloud” (for the usual “convenience” reasons), I would probably have fired them, for forgetting that when it comes to data — most especially private data — security matters more than ease or convenience. I eve refused to back up our customer data on the company’s own mainframe, so protective did I feel about the issue.
And I think that people need to feel more like that today, because in today’s world data security is more, not less fragile and indeed vulnerable.
Great work you did and effective, back in the day. Today, THE CLOUD and omnipresent surveillance means privacy of the kind you worked so hard for does not exist. How to live free without it is a really interesting question. As for me, one of the reasons I finally retired was that I could no longer be a part of any of it. When employed in IT, being viewed as the old man standing outside shouting at the clouds, despite the truth of it, is no way to live.
Now tell us about portable telephones.
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They’re radios. ‘Nuff said.
I forget where I heard it, but there’s an assertion that the only truly secure computer is one which is encased in a large block of concrete and dropped into an undisclosed spot in the ocean.
In actual computer security there is what is called the “Computer Security Triad”, or “CIA” triad after it’s initials;
Confidentiality–accessible to those who are authorized to see it.
Integrity–The data is verifiably consistent (to whatever degree).
Availability–we have what we need, when we need it.
Computer security is balancing those three things *within the needs and budget* of the business.
I work in the IT field and you are dead nuts on. I hate the cloud on ideological grounds, but was forced to move our company environment to it by “Learship”. So far everything I hated about it has come true, and none of the advertised benefits have proven real.
The worst part of the experience really is learning what level of ultra-cowardice exists at middle & senior management levels in any organization. They would deny it, but if told to kill one of their kids and crock pot them, they would.
This sits at the intersection of two or three areas that I am somewhere between “knowledgeable” and “expert” in. I’ve been in the IT industry since the mid 90s, I’m a Certified Information Systems Security Professional since 2009, and I’ve spent the last 6 years working “in the cloud”.
With the exception of an offline system, your data is *safer* on well designed cloud system than it is siting in your companies in-house datacenter.
Amazon makes somewhere between no and almost no profit on their online store. They booked over 100 billion in revenue and 39 billion in “operating income” IN 2024. Their first QUARTER of 2025 saw operating income of over 29 billion.
They have both the money, and the incentive to make that sh*t as absolutely secure as possible. They are hiring the very, very best security folks willing to work for them, and paying them VERY well to make those systems as absolutely as secure as possible. They (and Google) have the money to develop and build their own hardware and software, and the means to *really* test it.
You cannot do better than that today.
Kim had the design right–store some sort of “UUID” (Universally Unique IDentifier) in the operational database, and have all the PID in a second table on a separate system.
But that was 30 years ago, and the world–and it’s demands–are often very different today.
Today *everything* is connected all the time, and no one (outside the tech industry) is building their own data centers. Oh, maybe a closet here, or a small test lab there, and yeah, if you have data centers already built out you’re (usually) not getting rid of them because the ongoing maintenance is still cheaper than putting your stuff in someone else’s warehouse.
But you’re *MORE* at risk from various attacks in doing that than you are “in the cloud”, simply because you have to tie all the stuff–networks, routers, firewalls, internal security measures etc. etc. on top of stuff that Amazon and Google give you for free–encrypted “disks”, key management etc. And you have to do it at least as well as they do. Which means you’re competing with Amazon and Google for security staff.
The one exception is that AWS/GCP et. al. can’t do real offline storage cost effectively. In the modern world “Air Gapped” systems weren’t what they were 20 years ago.
The thing about *real* security is that you have to take into account the human factor, we get tired, we get rushed, we forget things.
And we’re absolute bastards. We don’t leave well enough alone, we do things just to see if we can, we put MORE effort into theft &&etc. than we do into “real” work.
In 2026 “air gapped” systems no longer work. Hell, one could argue that the end of that notion was in 1998 when PC Gamer and PC Play magazines published CDs with malware on them. Or when Warner brothers did something similar in 2001. Or Sony in 2005. But it was definitely dead by July of 2010 when the world learned about StuxNet–the Israelis and US “hacked” the (offline) Iranian Uranium Enrichment program using USB drives dropped in the parking lot of the facility.
In the era of ransomware attacks it *does* make sense to do offline backups, but in *very* careful ways, you have to take steps to make sure that what you’re backing up is not corrupted, and then make sure its stored on encrypted filesystems/disks (encryption at rest).
Wow. Paradox and QuatroPro. That rings bells. Faintly! And Jaz disks. Long long ago in a galaxy far away….
The real problem with AWS (etc.) is that you have no control over where *your* data is stored, and you have no guarantee that it will not be lost. AIUI, Amazon does NOT guarantee that it will or can *keep* your data.
On top of that, AIUI, AWS charges you for every IOP *in* and *out*, so it is expensive to use your own data. For data which is more or less static, you might well be better off with a ‘data store’ PC which is only turned on when needed.
This is an entirely different scenario from firing up a instance to run a compute intensive job once a month. Just remember to release the storage or you will get charged!
I admit most of my home data is on the cloud, but my classification levels are pretty much “Times” and “hell no”. Any data sitting unencrypted on my disk or the Cloud, I don’t care if you publish on the front page of the New York Times. Some of it might be annoying to be there (pay stubs with nothing interesting but gross and net pay), but I’ve generally reached the I Don’t Care stage of my life (plus you can still look my salary up at previous Public employer…),
If it has info I wouldn’t share, it gets encrypted first. Then I put it at least 3 different clouds, plus my own internal backup scheme…
When I ran the internet-sales department for a mid-tier manufacturer in the firearms sector, I used to backup the live database every day and export a revenue report. All my development and testing was on servers in my physical office, source code in a revision-control system, standard practice in the salad days of the internet.
Kids with 2-year software degrees don’t know any of this stuff. They know how to fuck around on the public-facing server with telnet and ftp. If something goes wrong, they can’t look at their code history or their database history in a safe, offline environment. They have to call tech support and request a rollback, and they never know quite where they are. If the hosting network catastrophically fails, everything is gone.
Another problem is simply ignorance. Recently I wanted to give my GenX son an inventory of the armory, S/N’s and all, for safekeeping and to pick what he might want some day. Not getting any younger, you know. Sure, no problem, he said, I’ll just put it up on – some consumer cloud storage, I don’t remember which one. Uh, no.
The kids have never had any privacy and don’t even know what it means.
Just as “Equality was the 20th Century myth, Privacy is the 21st Century myth.
If it was some place like DropBox, it’s safer than in your home.
I’ve been out of the field for nearly 15 years but on-site is to be preferred if you can afford it. If you are in business the Chinese will try to hack you. If you are in business the American security services will try to access your data. There’s a huge concern in the UK right now about police data being outsourced to the UK subsidiary of an American company.
If you put it in the cloud, you lose control.
Quattro — now there’s a memory! Loved it. That and WordPerfect. Oh my, and Harvard Graphics! Can’t forget that!
Anyhoo, not exactly on target here, but I seem to recall you had issues with a computer a while back and were worried about losing your data. I sorely miss the ole American Rifleman blog, and it reminded me.
A couple of $99 WD solid state backup drives, alternating a weekly backup between them would go a long way toward easing any concerns about the cloud AND provide you with the peace of mind that restoring your data after a computer crash would be far less painful.
Just thought I’d put a little reminder about that here, FWIW.