With IT becoming increasingly complex and expensive to maintain, and a global economy in crisis, the timing could hardly be better for the technologies and services coming together as cloud computing. Before enterprises throw themselves headlong into embracing this trend, however, they will want to ask themselves (and their potential providers) a few key questions regarding cloud and risk:

• How much visibility do I have into how you manage my risks?
• What risks do your other tenants pose to me, or to you?
• Are your tools and techniques for managing risk mature enough?
• Is my data safe with you?
• How will turning to cloud impact my current approach to management?

In this EMA Research Report, security expert Scott Crawford poses these five questions, with a focus primarily on cloud computing delivered by third parties outside the enterprise. How the industry answers these questions may well define the evolution of cloud computing as an external service.