When the NSA PRISM revelations hit back in June, it initially spelled bad news for many cloud industry players, especially in the US. With analysts speculating that the damage to the US cloud computing industry could go as high as $35bn, it was a fractured period of time.

For San Jose-based cloud information protector CipherCloud, however, it was a different story.

CEO and founder Pravin Kothari and senior vice president Paige Leidig were both at a Gartner summit in Washington DC when the news broke, and Leidig told CloudTech that the benefits to the company were instant.

“Because of that news, our local sales team on the East Coast brought us in to basically half a dozen different opportunities, directly related to that news,” Leidig said, adding: “Ever since then it’s been a significant driver to generate awareness and importance of protecting data in the cloud.

“It’s helped …