Ride the Lightning
Cybersecurity and Future of Law Practice Blog
by Sharon D. Nelson Esq., President of Sensei Enterprises, Inc.
CLOUD COMPUTING FOR LAW FIRMS? THINK IT THROUGH
August 24, 2009
Sam Glover recently published on Lawyerist a post answering the question, "Can you trust Google Apps (and other SaaS)? If you read the post, in which Sam says that he uses Google Apps and isn't worried about security, privacy or waiving the attorney-client privilege, you might conclude that there is no real cause for concern for lawyers using cloud computing or software as a service (SaaS).
John's response to this post:
"He’s missing the point. Most people are not using SaaS as he states. Even small law firms are running their own Exchange server and not using web-based e-mail. Granted all BlackBerry communications run through Canada, but the data is encrypted from the devices to the end unit. The point is not that Google or Microsoft or whoever is reading your e-mail, the point is that they can and do scan the data contents for marketing purposes. I would never use Google Apps for anything that I really cared about. Remember the security hole in Google docs where you could access the data even after it was supposedly deleted?
Bottom line…you are giving your data to a third party. You don’t know where the data is stored or who may have access to it. Even the RSA says that cloud computing is not secure enough."
As you can tell, he is not a fan.
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