Last weekend I visited Alcatraz Island for the first time. Having lived in San Francisco since 1991, I always felt somewhat guilty that I hadn’t visited this major landmark and national park for so long. So, for the crime of Alcatraz evasion, I did my time, I paid the price, and I’m glad I did.
From the Wikipedia, here’s the story of its name: The first Spaniard to discover the island was Juan Manuel de Ayala in 1775, who charted San Francisco Bay and named the island “La Isla de los Alcatraces,” which translates as “The Island of the Pelicans,” from the archaic Spanish alcatraz, “pelican,” a word which was borrowed originally from Arabic: القطرس al-qaṭrās, meaning sea eagle.
This document from the Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy provides a good, quick history of Alcatraz Island.
I highly recommend visiting Alcatraz. Included in the ticket price is an excellent audio tour, hosted by former prison guards and inmates. There is also an excellent guided walking tour available just after you exit the boat. The ferry ride on San Francisco Bay provides spectacular views.
I bought a facsimile edition of the “Institution Rules & Regulations” by Warden Paul J. Madigan, revised in 1956, to learn more about prison life following the excellent tour. It was interesting to read an exact copy of the 1956 manual that all inmates received and were required to know, obey, and keep in their cells at all times.
The manual includes 53 rules and regulations on 19 pages. The rule that struck me the most is number 46, “MUSIC RULES,” which is among the longest in the book. Here are a few excerpts:
- Musical instruments may be purchased if approved by the Associate Warden.
- Guitars and other stringed instruments may be played in the cellhouse in a QUIET manner only between the hours of 5:30 P.M. and 7:00 P.M.. No singing or whistling accompaniments will be tolerated. Any instrument which is played in an unauthorized place, manner, or time will be confiscated and the inmate placed on a disciplinary report.
- Wind instruments, drums and pianos will be played in the band or Orchestra Rooms on Saturdays, Sundays and Holidays. At no time will you play any wind instrument in the cellhouse.
- Permission to play instruments in the Band, Orchestra or bathrooms may be granted by the Associate Warden to inmates in good standing.
- A limited number of inmates may be allowed to take musical instruments to and from the recreation yard.
- No inmate is allowed to give, sell, trade, exchange, gamble, loan or otherwise dispose of his personal or institutional instrument or to receive such from another inmate.
- Institutional instruments may be loaned to inmates in good standing upon the approval of the Associate Warden.
- Guitar strings shall be purchased in the regular manner and stored in “A” Block until needed. An old set of strings must be turned in to the cellhouse Officer to draw a new set.
There were many rules and regulations at Alcatraz, just like there are in IT security and governance. As your company moves to enterprise cloud computing, where your data may be stored and applications may be hosted off-premises with other companies’ data, your company needs to ensure data security and privacy.
In this three-part article series, “How to justify information security spending on cloud computing,” cloud-security expert Dan Sullivan provides an excellent overview and assessment of security and compliance concerns. You may need to register for free to view it, but it’s well worth it. In parts one and two, Dan covers topics such as:
- Desktop software replacement
- Back-office infrastructure
- General security considerations
- Encryption measures
- Availability and SLAs
- Compliance
- Infrastructure security
- Protecting data in transit and the demise of network boundaries
- Sharing data with trusted business partners
- Employees and personal information devices
The third part is a 27-page pdf about many aspects of compliance in considerable detail, with many references to specific laws, their compliance requirements, and how to fulfill them.
For further reading, you can download the complete eBook here. Again, you may need to register for free.
Dan’s excellent work explaining cloud-security concepts reminds me of the excellent tour and the thorough rules and regulations manual at Alcatraz, where it was all about maximum security. Dan shows that cloud computing security and compliance policies can be implemented with equal or better rigor and uniformity than on-premises systems.
Leading solutions that help solve your concerns for compliance and security in the cloud include:
- Integration products from Pervasive Software and Sesame Softwarethat provide data exchange and interoperability between legacy on-premises and software-as-a-service (SaaS) applications
- Cloud-based single sign-on systems from TriCipher that provide a secure, single login for a user to access all authorized cloud-based applications
How do you plan to secure your data for compliance and security in the cloud even better than the penitentiary secured its premises on Alcatraz Island?
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