Cloud Surveillance is Wake Up Call for the Enterprise

The leaks of an NSA project called XKeyscore and the existence of the PRISM program, have once again generated fears for moving data into the cloud. The surveillance programs have created broad concerns from privacy watchdogs about the sanctity of securing personal information and calls from EU regulators for limiting data to national boundaries and suspending the long accepted notion of safe harbor.  

These recent revelations of these surveillance programs prove the importance of cloud information protection that is the new imperative for enterprises.              

XKeyscore, PRISM and whatever surveillance program, requires enterprises to confront the realities of a ubiquitous surveillance environment by taking proactive steps to fully defend that data from exposure.

Today, we need to adopt new approach to cyber defense - cloud information protection.

To ensure protection for data in the cloud, you need to know where it is and who has access to it and what content is sensitive, proprietary, or regulated and how can it be identified. You need know where this data reside in the cloud and what range of regional privacy, disclosure and other laws might apply. You need to keep the keys that encrypt and decipher information under the control of the user organization.

You need to customize DLP policies to scan, detect and take action to protect information according to its level of sensitivity. You can scramble sensitive information into undecipherable gibberish to protect it from unauthorized viewers.

In addition, an open platform capable of supporting all cloud applications and integrating third-party tools provides a stable foundation for protection.

Paige Leidig, senior vice president, CipherCloud said in a statement, "Whether we're talking about PRISM, XKeyscore or the next cyber surveillance program to be unveiled by Snowden, the takeaway for businesses all over the world is clear. It is no longer safe to leave sensitive data in the clear, naked and undefended, because the watchers are omnipotent, the only sensible way to clothe and defend data is through unbreakable encryption that scrambles information into gibberish."