Over in the Office 365 Community Group on LinkedIn one of the members just made me aware of a product that encrypts data in Office 365. The product is called Vaultive as a Service for 365 and it seemingly works by passing all content through it’s service on the way to Office 365. As it passes through it gets encrypted and as it passes back gets decrypted. Sounds pretty useful, especially in the current climate where the US government are about to make it law that they can get their hands on data managed by a US company regardless of which country it’s stored within.
Would a solution like this mitigate the worries and risks of governments being able to get data? Has anyone use an encryption service like this and what is the performance like? Does it also work with SharePoint or is it a pure email solution?
Please share your thoughts.
Office 365 already has encryption at rest through the new Fort Knox implementation, so I’d have some concerns about the double encryption.. if anything just from the potential performance impact.
In the end it comes down to how concerned are you that a foreign power could access your data. If the USA wanted to get at your company data in the UK (and if they could show just cause) they could request the data via the existing agreements between the USA & UK (and similarly Ireland and Holland no doubt) which would result in a Court from the Sovereign country issuing the mandatory order.
The issue with the current case is that the USA seem hell bent on disregarding the (current) due process. In which case if you are truly paranoid or have just cause.. Double encrypt or copy Jennifer Lawrence’s example and stop storing your data in the cloud.
Paul.
