The fallout of the Edward Snowden scandal that broke over the summer is being felt globally, with concerns around governments’ ability to access data prompting many organisations to rethink their investment in ICT and the cloud. It is this information that has contributed to analysts estimating that the US cloud computing industry could lose up to $180 million by 2016. This has opened up a debate – has the PRISM project spawned a culture of paranoia?

Why are organisations so worried about data monitoring and is it a justifiable concern?

Following what the business community has learnt about online surveillance, organisations are now asking their cloud provider how they can improve data security. Equally, data sovereignty, the physical location where data is stored and the data centre partner are now wider organisational concerns, not simply just the remit of the CIO. Keeping data in data centres in a country where the …