George V. Hulme writes:
Last summer, Federal Chief Information Officer Vivek Kundra asked the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) to help accelerate the federal government’s secure adoption of cloud computing by leading efforts to develop cloud standards and guidelines.
And NIST just delivered. The agency published two new draft documents on cloud computing. The first document, NIST Definition of Cloud Computing (NIST Special Publication (SP) 800-145) defines cloud computing at least as far as the government is concerned. The second document is Guidelines on Security and Privacy in Public Cloud Computing (SP 800-144). The NIST definition hasn’t changed noticeably since its early definitions of cloud computing, which, according to NIST, cloud computing must consist of the following elements: on-demand self-service, broad network access, resource pooling, rapid elasticity and be a measured service.
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