I think the recent litany of cloud security breaches rightly justifies concerns about moving enterprise data stores to the cloud environment. I completely understand the draw, especially for smaller companies, to attempt outsourcing their data centers using the cloud for cost purposes. However, I think this is more a matter of calculated risk on their part to save money, and possibly even a bit of wishful thinking/being blinded by the price tag. In smaller companies, security threats are often rationalized away by the argument that they are not a big enough company to be a likely target for hacking, etc...

This, I think, is ironic because it seems to me that by jumping into the cloud with everyone else they are actually voluntarily taking on more risk by putting all of their data assets into a much larger collection of data assets, which when taken together makes a much more attractive target for a group looking to make a name for themselves as "uber-hackers". Think of the bank robbers of the early 20th century... their not going door-to-door looking for small scores, their looking for the big pay-off from the community vault.

Granted, with time came better security measures and more serious enforcement efforts to create a better sense of security in the banking community by discouraging theft and insuring the valuable assets which were being vaulted. This will also likely happen with the cloud as it continues to develop and evolve. I just don't think the cloud is there yet. Data security just isn't taken as seriously as fiscal security, which I believe is evidenced by the fact that the major players in this arena are companies like Amazon... Not a data security company. That's like saying, "I bank with Walmart". Data is also a different beast. Although, much like time, it can be translated directly to $$$, it has a kind of Genie in a bottle/Pandora's box aspect to it. Once the cat's out of the bag, it's not easily coaxed back in...

Just my 2 cents...