So this speaks to the issues yesterday having to do with control of records and data stored as back ups either on tape or in the Cloud.

Amazon and Google’s Cloud offering don’t necessarily sit on the app provider’s servers and the increased use of APIs to facilitate greater interoperability among web apps, means that your data may be used in many ways that you don’t expect.  Data Privacy is not the given many of us expect.

Cloud services do not provide the same Fourth Amendment right to privacy we have grown accustomed to.  The Cloud itself utilizes unreasonable search and seizure of information as part of its value to the Cloud provider.  The commoditize the value of the information assets by tracking our behavior on the Internet or in the marketplace.

Owners seldom control where the data is stored or what level of security is to be provided.  They have no control on the sale of the Cloud provider being sold to an adversarial interest. Who owns and controls your data should be firmly established.

Who knew that when records managers failed to speak up when the mergers and acquisitions of their local records storage contractor to larger and larger entities, that this would open the door to allowing business records to be owned by anybody and everybody. The Cloud guys noticed and thought  “They don’t care where there records are.”   So now Microsoft is fighting the U.S. Government to avoid providing records stored in Ireland to the U.S. Government.  Safe Harbor??  I doubt it.  In fact, an overwhelming number of users expect their data to be unsafe and breached in the Digital Space or Cloud.  And of course hackers now easily track our digital footprint.

The business model of the Cloud is to incentivize through low cost storage the collection of our personal information and in their minds that is their true return on investment for all this free or low cost storage in the Cloud.  Let’s face it, who actually reads those Terms of Service Agreements, which evolve over time to give them greater and greater control.  One must remember that the Cloud that has the ability to encrypt your data also has the ability to un-encrypt the data. Encryption should be done prior to shipment to the Cloud.

Should you wish to pull your data from a Cloud, that might be taken over by an adversarial interest, what would it cost and how would you know it was all removed?  And would their bandwidth support your rapid movement away from their site. Too often we focus on storage capacity not the ability to retrieve the data in an appropriate time frame.

The amazing thing about our devices now is that the manufacturers seem to be able to over-ride our own security settings. Overtime I hop in a rental car, my iPhone is trying to sync with the Bluetooth system, my iPad starts searching for hot spots on its own,  and we have no idea how many things exist in the world trying to connect us to the Internet of Things.  And that is before we even talk about Hackers.  The backdoor is the new front door.

The commingling of private and business data occurs routinely. The deeding over to the Cloud our data after a period of time is just another nail in the coffin lid to the death of our personal data and records.  One article referred to the Cloud’s loss of integrity as being similar to boiling a frog.  If you raise the degrees slowly enough, the frog doesn’t even notice.




Hugh Smith
FIRELOCK Fireproof Modular Vaults
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