Following Incidents into the Cloud

The increased level of complexity which cloud computing has introduced to incident handling is not well understood nor fully engaged. Further complicating this are economic pressures that move companies to commit themselves on a course of cloud adoption without taking into account the inherent risks. The complete array of risks and effects of cloud integration on incident handling are often not fully assessed and mitigated prior to contract signing and implementation. These decisions can have serious consequences depending on the regulatory requirements of a company or organization and its ability to absorb realized risk. This paper attempts to identify problem areas for incident management in an enterprise considering cloud integration, and provide clarifying questions that should be answered satisfactorily before committing to cloud integration and signing contracts with cloud providers.