We’re taking some initiative at the blog today and declaring it Cloud Security & Trust Week. We realize it’s not quite a revolutionary thought, nor big news, but it’s a theme that’s trending again and it’s a topic taken seriously in these parts.

And more and more, it’s not a conversation topic exclusive to corporate IT executives. Cloud computing is now a mandatory consideration for most organizations. We’ve written on the blog before about how enterprises not normally associated with computing are finding payoffs in virtualization. A recent post on how the United States Golf Association has adopted cloud computing comes to mind.

Add to these real-world examples the NBA’s Boston Celtics, who’ve stopped talking man-to-man defense to talk about cloud security.

The Celtics VP talks in a CSO Online article about using cloud-based providers to maintain security for the organization’s email. The team uses a cloud solution to host mail, and another cloud solution secures the mail with virus protection.

Over at Microsoft, Worldwide Chief Security Advisor Roger Halbheer has been writing a lot about cloud security recently, encouraging the federal government to consider the issue in greater detail and with more coordination. Halbheer announced in a post on his blog last week [link] his move from an EMEA role to a global advising role for Microsoft, again showing the increasing importance of the cloud security topic.

Of course, CSC remains at the forefront of cloud security discussions. CSC appointed Andy Purdy as Chief Cybersecurity Strategist in February. Last week he presented in Zurich, Switzerland, at the 2010 Workshop on Cyber Security and Global Affairs & Security Confabulation IV. His presentation, “A Global, Strategic Approach to Cyber Crime,” [download] notes the worldwide spike in malicious acts in IT and the need for the public and private sector to partner in order to effectively combat the cyber threat.

Purdy’s talk was accompanied by dozens of others on similar topics, and other events are spring up around the world — later this month is the Cloud Identity Summit, for example. So, this week we’ll explore the topic in some detail here with the help of the team at CSC.

Tomorrow, we’ll continue with a discussion featuring CSC’s Global Security Solutions Director Ron Knode. Knode was recently featured in a Forbes article on choosing the right cloud services vendor based on security concerns [link].