The last few days, we’ve all been witnessing quite a spy movie unfolding in the news. The tale of Edward Snowden, former NSA contractor and his revelations about the extent of the USA surveillance program over the world.
Unfortunately, the main information people remember from that story is that Data, in all its form, is actually being scrutinized and stored by the US government.
I live in a country where a lot of companies are still reluctant to trust cloud-based services because they are not sure about putting important digital assets out there on the web and part of my job is to show them that their data is secure and how serious ClicData is about making sure their data won’t get shared with anybody unauthorized by them or lost at any point in time.
Well, this story just made my work much more complicated. How can I persuade them, when one of the most powerful countries in the world with the capabilities to store and analyze any communication and the power to break most encryption systems is actually sucking the whole internet for “state security” purposes?
The question actually came up this week, as I was doing a presentation of ClicData in front of a floor of accountants and cost controllers and fortunately ClicData is currently being hosted by a French company on servers based in France where the US government is not allowed to access data as easily as in their own country.
In the coming future, as we evaluate our hosting suppliers in different regions we will be looking at hosting providers that support data privacy for the consumer and not the government.
Access to our database is encrypted, we are using a token system based on each user account. Basically, each data source is tied to an account and only the account with the right token can access & use a data source.
We have plans on adding a feature to allow people to share their data source, but we are still working on a way to make this system as secure as possible.
We are taking the security of our user’s data VERY seriously and will continue to do our best to ensure safe access while keeping things simple and collaborative.
Stories like that on the news are just crushing any trusts companies like us have started to build with their audience and in the end, are hurting a huge chunk on the whole web-market, and I find this quite tragic.