15. The Cloud

The history of passwords dates back to the Roman military. Initially, they were carved into wood and soldiers passed them around via the active guard on duty. They were a shared resource. Today, the most common storage of a password is the human brain, and not physically documented and shared. We assign a password to a system or application, recall it when it needs to be used, and remember it each time we change it. Our brains are full of passwords and, often, we forget them, need to share them, and are forced to document them on Post-it notes and spreadsheets and even communicate them via email or text message (a very poor security practice in itself). These insecure methods for sharing passwords have caused the press to report front page news articles on data breaches and compelled organizations to educate employees on the insecure methods for password storage and sharing. Humans should not be expected to verbally or typographically share a password, nor is it safe to communicate them using traditional business collaboration tools. Therefore, a better method to document passwords is needed that is highly secure, documents distributed access, and promotes sharing and collaboration with minimal risk—no matter where the access occurs, and from virtually any medium. The cloud is ideal for this situation when passwords need to be available outside of the organization, across multiple geographical locations, for small- to medium-sized businesses, and when on-premise technology is incapable or cost-prohibitive for meeting business objectives. Ergo, if the Romans had the cloud, Zeus would have just updated everyone with the proper passwords and not left it to humans to scribe them on wood and accept the risk of physically passing them around.