Page 16 - CDM Cyber Warnings November 2013

In a first time the report explicitly referred Microsoft as possible victims of cyber
espionage operated by the Chinese government because the US cloud provider has
licensed its products to 21Vianet Group Inc. A Beijing-based company selling online
data center services.

It seems that Microsoft licenses its Windows Azure and Office 365 products to 21Vianet,
but the commission on Nov. 19 backed away from that assertion because it was based
on an incorrect report called Red Cloud Rising written by private U.S. Intelligence and
security company, Defense Group Inc., based in Vienna, Virginia.

In reality the Chinese company 21Vianet, the Chinese company doesn’t have access to
“services and datacenters operated by Microsoft outside of China,” according Doug
Hauger, the Microsoft’s general manager for China commercial cloud services.

The commission recommends in its report that Congress direct the Obama
administration “to prepare an inventory of existing federal use of cloud computing
platforms and services and determine where the data storage and computing services
are geographically located.” The inventory should be prepared annually, it said.

The opinion on the report are divided, is security and intelligence specialists fear
Chinese cyber threats IT manager believe that the commission’s report could damage a
growing industry in China.

China’s cloud computing industry will continue to grow despite the strict control of
Internet operated by the government of Beijing and be valued at $163 billion by 2015,
Many experts believe IT industry will not be able to seize the opportunity also in terms of
security.

Source: Pierluigi Paganini, Editor-in-Chief, CDM

16 Cyber Warnings E-Magazine – November 2013 Edition
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