Great story coming out of Germany this morning from dpa, Germany’s leading news agency: Our own data cloud: Ways to secure online storage.
Reporter Dirk Averesch writes about privacy and protection of data in the wake of the NSA disclosures and warns against using consumer-grade cloud services like Dropbox.
(Quotes are Google-translated from original German)
“privacy – what is that? The lesson of the NSA scandal is for many: When it comes to the protection of their own data, you should avoid the popular U.S. Internet service providers. This is not impossible, because you can implement in-house or at least with trusted vendors instead.”
Averesch goes on to mention several vendors, but ultimately:
“But such solutions are subject to restrictions, such as when sharing data with others or at functions. Therefore, there is cloud software such as the free ownCloud, with which you can repurpose any home computer as an Internet cloud server. ownCloud even runs on older computers or laptops, even the economical mini-computer Raspberry Pi.
“TU Berlin and ETH Zurich use ownCloud and provide students and employees with safe and free online storage. Also, the University of Münster is testing ownCloud to provide their own and soon interested universities throughout North Rhine-Westphalia with a storage service. “We have had a very good experience with ownCloud” says Raimund Vogl, who directs the Center for Information Processing at the University of Münster.”
It feels great to hear ETH, TU Berlin and the University of Munster talk so positively about ownCloud Community Edition. ownCloud Community gives advocates and end users a free, private, secure and innovative way to have complete control over their data. ownCloud Enterprise Edition adds certification tests of the server, desktop clients and mobile apps as well as added features, packaging and easy installation and upgrade — certified and ready for enterprise production environments.
