Compromises in security are necessary to make cloud services easy to use for non-technical consumers, experts have said.

The question of the impact of making cloud services consumer friendly arose this week, following the discovery of Apple and Amazon security flaws that enabled hackers to gain access to tech journalist Mat Honan’s iCloud account. Once in, they erased all data from his iPhone, iPad and MacBook.

In Honan’s case, the hackers didn’t use sophisticated tools to break into his account. Instead, they got the information they needed by impersonating him in telephone calls to Apple’s and Amazon’s tech support.

While Honan fell victim to human error, other high profile hacks of consumer services over the last three months involved breaking into websites and stealing millions of customer passwords. The businesses that suffered the security breaches included Yahoo, LinkedIn, Dropbox and eHarmony.

So the question becomes, are these sites inherently unsecure because they need to be very user friendly? Would having better security, such as two-factor authentication or the enforcement of more hacker-proof passwords, be so inconvenient that it would drive people to competitors?

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Source: IDG Reporter Al Bawaba Ltd.