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Monday 25 April 2011
News Update - Monday 25/4/11
Here's the pick of the last week's news stories that are likely to impact your business:
Facebook: Optimising your business page for search engines
Cloud security: How secure are encrypted files on American cloud servers?
The article about cloud security (drop box) is fascinating and it is great to see such privacy issues are getting more exposure. Dropbox is indeed a brilliant and very efficient way of data backup as well as making data available to access anywhere. However, I would warn any organisation to seriously consider alternative options before using dropbox on a commercial basis. For starters, they will be putting their own confidential data under the jurisdiction of another country. Imagine a US company sueing a UK based company whose data is backed up in the US via dropbox. The UK company will not enjoy the protection offered by the UK legal system over its UK generated data. The reputational risk alone, if the UK company holds customer or consumer data is of great significance. In addition, any organisation or individual thinking of backing up their data in the “cloud”, needs to consider the provisions of Data Protection Act and other relevant legislation. This is not to say that data should not be backed up to the cloud, only that a degree of awareness is needed to determine what is being backed up, where it will be held, under what security and privacy arrangements, the level of assurance provided, and any regulation involved.
The article about cloud security (drop box) is fascinating and it is great to see such privacy issues are getting more exposure. Dropbox is indeed a brilliant and very efficient way of data backup as well as making data available to access anywhere. However, I would warn any organisation to seriously consider alternative options before using dropbox on a commercial basis. For starters, they will be putting their own confidential data under the jurisdiction of another country. Imagine a US company sueing a UK based company whose data is backed up in the US via dropbox. The UK company will not enjoy the protection offered by the UK legal system over its UK generated data. The reputational risk alone, if the UK company holds customer or consumer data is of great significance. In addition, any organisation or individual thinking of backing up their data in the “cloud”, needs to consider the provisions of Data Protection Act and other relevant legislation. This is not to say that data should not be backed up to the cloud, only that a degree of awareness is needed to determine what is being backed up, where it will be held, under what security and privacy arrangements, the level of assurance provided, and any regulation involved.
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