Ever get the feeling that your backup system is behind the times? Do you read trade magazines and wonder if you’re the only one still using an antiquated backup system? The first thing you should know is that you’re not the only one. But your backup system could probably use some modernization.

A new variation on the Fake Anti-Virus scam actually launches legitimate uninstallers of anti-virus programs from Symantec, Microsoft, AVG and others.

The phony anti-virus scam keeps getting new wrinkles, the latest being a pop-up Anti-Virus alert that warns users that their security program is uncertified and must be replaced. When the alert is clicked, it launches the user’s legitimate anti-virus uninstall program.

For enterprises, one of the biggest challenges with cloud computing include transparency into the operational, policy and regulatory, and security controls of cloud providers. For cloud providers, one of their pressing challenges is answering all of the audit and information gathering requests from customers and prospects. CloudAudit aims to change that.

Many cloud providers are learning to eat their own dog food, and they’re leveraging other clouds to augment missing pieces of their offerings. As a result, you may find that a cloud provider offering software as a service (SaaS) is actually leveraging another cloud for storage, another cloud for compute, and perhaps other components as well.

As cloud computing evolves — and providers try to get the market quickly — we could find that offerings appearing to be from a single provider are actually a composite of various cloud providers brought together to form a solution. I’ve found myself in briefing after briefing where this is the case. But should you care?

With the rising interest in private cloud computing, many public cloud providers are moving to service offerings that promise reserved portions of clouds they are calling reserved instances or sometime virtual private clouds. This is a step in the right direction, considering that many enterprises and government agencies are pushing back on public clouds. This is more around control issues than any legitimate technical arguments.