The situation with Stern Hu, the Rio Tinto executive currently detained in China raises issues about data security and protection of important and confidential company information. In the Rio case the Chinese Government have seized computers belonging to Rio and will have access to far more information than they may legitimately be entitled to see with respect to the case which they are pursuing.
Similarly, the Operation Wickenby tax office crackdown was given its start when Federal Police seized the laptop of a visiting overseas businessman while he was staying at a hotel in Melbourne. The information on the laptop led to the prosecution of several high profile Australians.
Now, I am not going to give you advice on how to hide information from the tax office. But it is important to secure your information and your communications in such a way that anybody, who ever that anybody is, cannot get to information which is sensitive and commercially valuable.
Cloud Computing offers an immediate opportunity to secure your communications away from prying eyes.
For example, if all of your email was done via Google’s gmail, then the laptop or office computer (which might be subject to seizure) would have nothing of value on its hard drive ….. all of the communications would be stored only on a server located , well, somewhere else.
Most business applications can now be served by cloud computing solutions, making the laptop which you lug around with you nothing more than a device which you will use to access the internet and use the email, documents management, or CRM systems being served up by a cloud computing provider.
The cloud services could be provided by your own IT division, or they could be sourced from commercial third party providers …. Or more likely it will be a combination of both.
So, free yourself from the pain of lugging a laptop around, the inconvenience of unpacking your briefcase every time you go through airport security, and the risk of information falling into the wrong hands …. Think of Cloud Computing as a way to protect your information from prying eyes.
Focus on What’s ImportantTM