Microsoft Makes Privacy in the Cloud a Priority

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eSecurity Planet reports Microsoft's chief privacy strategist told CFP conference attendees that protecting and ensuring accountability for user information requires the participation of a wide group.

Online privacy has been a growing concern for businesses, consumers and policymakers for more than a decade, and one that's becoming even more pressing as users migrate to cloud computing and adopt social networking for communicating with friends and colleagues.

As a result of the explosion in new models for storing and sharing corporate, personal and financial data, the industry needs to take steps to ensure comprehensive accountability, the head of Microsoft's privacy efforts said Tuesday.

"People care very, very deeply about privacy," Peter Cullen, Microsoft's chief privacy strategist, said in his opening keynote for the Computers, Freedom and Privacy (CFP) conference in San Jose, Calif. "For privacy professionals, the cloud represents the latest evidence that technology will likely always outpace policy. For instance, the data aggregation enabled by the cloud not only creates rich targets for bad guys, but also heightens a range of privacy and jurisdictional issues."

"To Microsoft, accountability is not just an important concept in this world of exponentially growing data flows," he said. "It is a critical governance principle that organizations need to live by."

Read the rest of "Microsoft: Privacy in the Cloud Is a Priority" at eSecurity Planet