Educational Institutions and Cloud Computing: A Roadmap of Responsibilities

Grazed from The Huffington Post. Author: Daniel J. Solove.

Increasingly, educational institutions and state entities handling student data are hiring outside companies to perform cloud computing functions related to managing personal information. The benefits of cloud computing are that outside entities might be more sophisticated at managing personal data. These entities may be able to manage data more inexpensively and effectively than the educational institution could do itself. In many cases, cloud computing providers can provide better security than the educational institutions can.

The risks of cloud computing are that educational institutions no longer have as much control over the personal data. They must rely on the cloud computing provider to have the appropriate practices and policies to ensure that data is properly maintained, handled, used, or disclosed…

One risk is that a cloud computing provider can outsource some functions to countries that have little to no legal privacy protections. In one instance, a university medical center outsourced transcription of its medical records to a company in California, which then subcontracted with a person in Florida, who subcontracted with a person in Texas, who ultimately subcontracted with a person in Pakistan. The person in Pakistan wasn’t paid by the person in Texas, so she wrote to the medical center and threatened that she would expose all the records unless the medical center got involved and made the Texas person pay. This example illustrates how easy it is to lose control over information when it is outsourced…

Read more from the source @ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/daniel-j-solove/educational-institutions-_b_2156612.html