CLOUD ACT: What Does That Mean for Your Cloud Storage

OMG Cloud Standards Summit

By G C Network | July 2, 2009

July 13-15, 2009, in Arlington, VA, the Object Management Group, is holding a Standards in Government & NGO’s Workshop. During the first day, the Cloud Computing Standards Summit will focus…

NDU IRM Cloud Computing Event “Sold Out”!!!

By G C Network | July 2, 2009

Hope you’ve already registered for the “The Cloud Computing Symposium” , Wednesday, July 15, 2009 at the National Defense University in Washington, DC! This promises to be the premier government…

SSA’s Jim Borland on Healthcare Information Technology

By G C Network | June 25, 2009

Today, on this week’s Federal News Radio Federal Executive Forum webcast, Mr. Jim Borland, Special Advisor for Health IT, Office of the Commissioner, Social Security Administration(SSA), will discuss the value…

Dr. Leslie Lenert of CDC Speaks on Healthcare IT

By G C Network | June 24, 2009

During this week’s Federal News Radio Federal Executive Forum pre-recording, Dr. Leslie Lenert, Director, National Center for Public Health Informatics (NCPHI) at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC),…

Linda Fischetti on VHA Healthcare

By G C Network | June 23, 2009

This week pre-recording of Federal News Radio Federal Executive Forum featured Linda Fischetti , Health Informatics Architect at the Veterans Health Administration (VHA). During a panel discussion, her comments on…

Vish Sankaran, HHS, Speaks on Healthcare IT

By G C Network | June 22, 2009

During the pre-recording of this weeks Federal News Radio Federal Executive Forum, Vish Sankaran, Program Director of Federal Health Architecture, discussed the role of information technology in improving the country’s…

Iranian Protests Showcase Twitter, Facebook, YouTube (and Cloud Computing) !

By G C Network | June 21, 2009

In covering unfolding events in Iran, the world’s most powerful news outlets have been entirely dependent on the Twitter-provided flow of text, images, and video. While this has definitely showcased…

Two Days with AWS Federal

By G C Network | June 18, 2009

Today, I start two days of training with Amazon Web Services (AWS) Federal. If that’s the first time you’ve ever heard about an AWS Federal division, your not alone. Held…

Maneuver Warfare in IT: A Cheerleading Pundit

By G C Network | June 15, 2009

The Twitter conversation between Christofer Hoff and I went like this: Christofer – I haven’t formally blogged a resp. (yet) to @Kevin_Jackson on his ‘maneuver warfare in IT’ Not just a cultural shift but a…

Expanding Maneuver Warfare in IT

By G C Network | June 12, 2009

Earlier this week I published “Cloud Computing: The Dawn of Maneuver Warfare in IT Security” via Ulitzer. In publishing the article my intent was to explore the more dynamic approach…

When Congress names a law after you, it’s getting serious.  That is where we are now with cloud computing.  The Clarifying Lawful Overseas Use of Data Act or CLOUD Act (H.R. 4943) is a United States federal law that amends the Stored Communications Act (SCA) of 1986.  This amendment allows federal law enforcement to compel U.S.-based technology companies via warrant or subpoena to provide requested data stored on servers regardless of whether the data are stored in the U.S. or on foreign soil. Industry observers see this as a reaction to the Microsoft vs. United States lawsuit, known on appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court as United States v. Microsoft Corp (Whew!). This data privacy case addressed legal issues associated with US law enforcement efforts to gather electronic data physically stored in a Microsoft datacenter outside of US territory.  So why should you care? That “electronic data” was email which is the lifeblood of just about every organization. That, in turn, means that the outcome of this still unsettled case could affect how and where you store corporate email.

While the case was under review by the Supreme Court, Congress passed the CLOUD Act which resolves concerns related to the initial warrant. Although passage of the law made the case moot and vacated an earlier legal decision, an enterprise that may have email stored in overseas locations could find themselves choosing between violating foreign data privacy laws, like the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) or violating the US CLOUD Act. This unenviable position is preventable by seriously focusing on your current cloud storage vendor arrangements.

If you’re like many organizations, you have consolidated your cloud storage infrastructure with a single vendor. On the surface, this seems like a logical path, but in reality, that strategy could open you up to some serious risks. The most obvious one is vendor lock-in which could leave you operationally dependent on that single provider.  It could also make it impossible for you to change providers should the business relationship fail for some reason.  A second issue is driven by a need for data immutability. Data pedigree must be beyond reproach, and an essential requirement for protecting this pedigree is data immutability. This term describes a data property of being unchanging or unable to be changed over time. Immutability is especially important in law enforcement where prosecutors rely on data to prove their case. If you’re operating within the United States, the CLOUD Act adds additional uncertainty to any risk calculation. Enterprises must take a look at classifying their data based on applicable data sovereignty laws which describe the notion that information stored in binary digital form is subject to the laws of the country in which it is located.

An effective mitigation strategy for these risks could be establishing a secondary cloud storage vendor. This move would:

  1. Eliminate the possibility of cloud storage vendor lock-in;
  2. Provide data portability options should the business relationship fail for any reason;
  3. Help establish auditable procedures for the management of any data subject to US data sovereignty laws; and
  4. Establish and maintain data immutability.

If you need to take action toward mitigating your organization’s cloud storage risks, Wasabi could be a good option.  Their “Hot Storage” solution is deployed in fully secure, redundant, and SOC-2, ISO 27001, and PCI-DSS certified data centers.   The company’s primary production data centers are in  Virginia and Oregon with additional European Union data centers coming available later this year. Wasabi is also one of the few cloud service providers capable of meeting data immutability standards which include:

  • Ensuring that none of the provider’s employees can change application code on a production system without first undergoing thorough review and testing
  • Confirmation that all data centers contain appropriate physical security using things like biometric access control and man-traps.
  • Data guarantees at least 11 nines in durability; and
  • Every data object is read every 90 days to detect and automatically correct any random errors.
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