NSA spying caused 9 percent of foreign firms to dump U.S. clouds

In the weeks following Edward Snowdens revelations of the NSAs massive web surveillance program PRISM, speculation was raised about the negative implications it could have on U.S. cloud companies.

Now, Forrester Research has taken the time to see just what kind of impact it has had, asking a host of foreign firms whether or not PRISM has caused them to scale back their spending on U.S. cloud services, and the answer makes for some uneasy reading.

A total of 1,668 non-U.S. business technology decision makers were quizzed in Forresters survey. The exact question asked was In the past year, has your company explicitly halted or reduced your spending with US-based companies for Internet-based services (e.g., cloud, online service/outsourcing) due to these security concerns?, with 26 percent of respondents answering in the affirmative.

Forrester followed up by asking the 427 who said yes what their reasons for doing so were, and found that 34 percent cited fear of the intelligence community spying. A quick sum of the math shows that 9 percent of foreign firms have therefore ditched U.S. cloud companies due to the NSA, not an insignificant number by any means, despite The Registers insistence that Snowden didnt scare off many.

Its worth nothing that the respondents held, on average, only about a third of their company data in U.S. clouds anyway, so their decision to pull out may not be as significant as it first seems. But even so, U.S. cloud firms will still want to take notice of the survey, which indicates that most foreign companies simply dont trust them all that much anyway, irrespective of the NSA. In total, 53 percent of respondents said they would not trust any of their critical data with a U.S. cloud company, end of story.

Forrester concludes that those who do wish to use the cloud for their most critical data need to be extra careful when it comes to choosing a supplier. It recommends looking for a cloud provider that offers additional controls over their datas security, and a choice over the location in which its held. It points to Amazon Web Servicess (AWS) Key Management Service as a good example of this.

Even so, Forresters report finishes with a rather controversial warning for those who are trusting their data to the cloud.

Your business partners are accountable to their governments, and you cant expect them to put your interests above their own or those of their government, the report states.

Read more:
NSA spying caused 9 percent of foreign firms to dump U.S. clouds