Security is still a big issue for the cloud market

Over the past several months I blogged about security as a key issue for the cloud computing market here, here, here, and here.

This week the following news stories confirm that the issue isn’t going away any time soon.

One story is on the EU funding cloud security initiatives, and the other focuses on the legalese of public cloud security and what responsibility the cloud market vendors are taking.

While it may constitute a headache for customers and some vendors, security is a huge opportunity for expansion stage software companies who are trying to make their way into cloud computing.

By providing thought leadership in cloud security and governance, new vendors can boost their competitive positioning and achieve significant competitive advantage.

Not surprisingly, a number of large software vendors and the investment bankers that serve them have recently talked about cloud security solutions as high M&A priorities in 2011, which is good news for venture capital investment funds looking into this space.