Discussing Privacy in the Cloud

Brendon Lynch, Chief Privacy Officer for Microsoft writes on the Trustworth Computing blog:

Cloud computing has quickly become a mainstream technology. Global businesses, entrepreneurs and government agencies are embracing the cloud to accelerate innovation and cut costs.

But the continued growth of cloud computing is not inevitable. Cloud providers need to adequately address the data protection and security concerns of enterprise customers and regulators for cloud services to earn the trust necessary to fulfill their potential benefits for businesses and governments. 

This issue was the focus of a panel discussion that we organized in Washington D.C. on November 15th. The panel included leading privacy voices from the federal government and advocacy groups, who discussed how cloud providers can address the privacy and safety concerns of enterprise users. Susie Adams, chief technology officer for Microsoft’s federal team, joined the panel. You can read Susie’s perspective on the discussion on the Microsoft on the Issues blog.

Tuesday’s event was the second in a series of conversations at our Innovation & Policy Center in Washington, D.C., exploring privacy issues that are top of mind for consumers, businesses, governments and policymakers. Microsoft has a longstanding commitment to privacy, and we work hard to earn the trust of our customers around the world by developing and adopting meaningful privacy practices. We believe companies have an important role to play in privacy discussions, so at each event we bring together a diverse mix of participants to examine key privacy topics from multiple perspectives.

We look forward to hosting additional important privacy conversations in the months to come. If you have feedback on these events, or suggestions of other privacy topics you’d like us to cover in the future, please leave us a comment and let us know.