Who Really Owns Cloud Data?
IT pros have lots of cloud worries. Is it secure? Is it private? Is it stable? Will the prices go up once you move? And will it kill off a decent portion of well paying IT jobs? They are also worried about data ownership. Can the cloud vendor somehow use the old maxim "possession is nine-tenths of the law" and exert ownership?
This is especially troubling in the case of subpoenas or government demands over compliance. While IT tends to honor these requests, I'm sure IT would rather hand off the data than a cloud provider.
All of these topics came to the fore during a recent CIO panel discussion. The CIOs argued that one way to allay these fears is to lay out data ownership in an iron-clad contract. If you don't like the terms, walk away and over to a provider that will abide by your terms. This is particularly critical for government agencies. Heck, it's a matter of national security. And it's not just data ownership you should stipulate, but IT processes, workflow and other proprietary IT information.
Posted by Doug Barney on 02/28/2011 at 12:47 PM