
Microsoft, the USA PATRIOT Act, and European cloud computing
Microsoft announced last month that its Software as a Service (SaaS) offering, Office 365, will better comply with European guidelines to ensure that customer data is adequately protected. This move is certainly welcome, but the long-armed spectre of the USA PATRIOT Act continues to hang over Microsoft and other US companies, regardless of customers’ nationality […]

Dropbox Shows Why We Can’t Have The Cloud The Way We Imagined
For the past few weeks, Tech Media is buzzing with discussions on Dropbox (see previous CloudAve coverage) security. Dropbox from their modest beginnings have grown big with 25 Million users. Recently, a security engineer Derek Newton exposed a serious security issue with them where they store the machine hash in an unencrypted form in any machine […]
The Cat is Out of the Bag (Again): The Hidden (?) Business Model in SaaS
Forget software: it’s all about (your) data. Hyper-growing Financial Management system provider and Quicken / MS Money challenger Mint recently raised eyebrows announcing their plan to sell anonymized aggregate customer data. Some reviewers were screaming, we saw bombastic titles like Personal Finance Startup Mint Wants To Sell Your Money Trail – but in reality the […]