There’s a quote that is oft overheard at security events and meetings – "If it’s online then it’s hackable." This was certainly the case with the recent iCloud leaks involving many female celebrities in various states of undress, which spilled onto the internet much like some kind of sordid x-rated digital Christmas.
Whenever companies lose any kind of customer data there is always a degree of debate over whether the company is the victim or at fault. In this case it seems Apple did the corporate equivalent of leaving the car unlocked with the valuables in plain sight, something that we should be able to assume banks working in the cloud will not be doing.
According to Celent, banks spent almost $180bn on IT in 2013. For the moment cloud-based services make up a tiny fraction of this amount, but by some estimates financial services spending on the cloud will total $26bn in 2015.