If you follow this blog, you may be sick by now of all the stories we find that just happen to agree with what we are doing. To be honest, we don’t go out of our way to search for these stories, it just seems to us that what we are doing is common sense. And there seems to be a lot of agreement out there.
But now comes a contrarian piece, surprisingly out of the pages of InformationWeek.
The title caught my attention right away: ‘Secure’ Cloud File Sync Is The Wrong Move. Really? I have to ask again – REALLY? To quote the author himself: “Broad brush statements like that one drive me crazy.”
The author does seem to have some good points like locking down data completely isn’t feasible, and if it’s not easy to use, no one will use it.
But in my humble opinion – the author just does not get the facts. First, everybody’s perceived security requirement is at a different level. While some people don’t mind all their data (potentially) out in the open, others do. Second, he ignores that there are certain types of data that simply are not allowed to be put in a cloud service – because the data is generated in a regulated industry.
I think our approach to give the users a choice is a great one. Users can choose to secure data, or not, or a combination of both.
One piece the author got right is the need to integrate into the apps – which is a bit where the problems start as there are so many of them — and we love for those to use the ownCloud APIs we provide. Better is a hook into the desktops — Windows, Mac and Linux (which is equally challenging). But – we have plenty of ideas and have a great product.
