One lesson from the NSA scandal: Find out where your cloud provider’s data centers are located
June 16, 2013
Grazed from GigaOM. Author: Amy Armitage.
For the early history of computing, data tended to be kept locked down within isolated, local systems for security reasons. With the advent of the cloud however, the idea of accessing data from anywhere, using cost-effective on-demand services is now thoroughly mainstream. Indeed, the future of IT is the cloud. As cloud computing continues its triumphant spread, one issue that has continued to get undeservedly little attention, though, is the geographical location of data. The ongoing NSA scandal is finally bringing to light just one aspect of how critically important the physical location of digital data has become.
Distance can increase risk
On the most basic level, choosing a cloud provider whose data centers are located on a distant continent will obviously increase latency and so adversely affect performance. For businesses where performance and speed are relevant that’s a major concern. But it’s also worth considering that submarine communication cables, despite all their protective layers, are regularly broken by fishing trawlers, anchors and natural events such as earthquakes and turbidity currents – more than 50 cable breakdowns a year are repaired in the Atlantic alone. So relying on distant cloud providers can add a layer of risk of service dropouts that isn’t tenable for many businesses…
Local business culture matters
Every country has its own traditions and business culture, which can be difficult to grasp from abroad. For instance, mutual misunderstanding between American companies and Japanese customers is not a rare thing. So it’s logical that cloud users from around the world prefer working with providers who speak the same language, work in the same time zone and understand their local customs. Dealing with far-flung customer service reps simply can’t compete with more local ones…
Read more from the source @ http://gigaom.com/2013/06/16/cloud-security-depends-on-geography/