Microsoft to Offer Encryption With its Cloud Services
Microsoft understands that its clients need their data to be safe and secure. That’s why Microsoft is spearheading an effort to construct a more secure cloud. Microsoft has proposed that it’s Azure cloud offering will encrypt data at all beginning and end points between data centers. The encryption method is expected to use a 2048 bit methodology. This release from Microsoft was aimed at calming corporate fears that data may be intercepted by domestic and or foreign government agencies such as the American NSA. With recent concerns emerging about how government intelligence agencies have figured out how to snoop on Yahoo and Google’s cloud, developers at Microsoft have decided that their cloud will not be subject to unwarranted snooping.
Brad Smith is an Executive Vice President of Legal and Corporate Affairs at Microsoft. He also serves on the general counsel. Smith had been quoted as saying, “All of this will be in place by the end of 2014, and much of it is effective immediately.” Smith was further quoted as saying, “We’re working with other companies across the industry to ensure that data traveling between services — from one email provider to another, for instance — is protected.”
One of the biggest concerns for companies who use the cloud is that the cloud provider will hand over data to the government without notifying the client. Microsoft has emphatically stated that this is against their way of doing business. Microsoft feels that the government should gather data the same way it did before the information. That method involves going directly to the company and asking them for the data instead of asking Microsoft to provide the data. Microsoft has dealt with this in the past. Smith chimed in on the concern by saying, “We’ve done this successfully in the past, and we will continue to do so in the future to preserve our ability to alert customers when governments seek to obtain their data.”
