Microsoft Cloud Data Breach Heralds Things to Come
What might be the first major cloud data breach happened Wednesday. Microsoft announced that data contained within its Business Productivity Online Suite (BPOS) has been downloaded by non-authorized users. You'd better get used to this kind of thing because we'll be seeing a lot more of it in the future. All any of us can do is pray we're not a victim.
The knee-jerk reaction might be to blame hackers, but that's not so here. The breach was down to an unspecified "configuration issue" in Microsoft's data centers in the United States, Europe and Asia. The Offline Address Book component of BPOS, which contains business contact information, was made available to non-authorized users in "very specific circumstances," according to Clint Patterson, the poor guy at Microsoft who's having to apologize for the mistake.
The problem was fixed two hours after being discovered (how long was it open before that?), and to Microsoft's credit it has tracking facilities in place that allow it to clean up the mess by contacting those who downloaded the wrong data. However, the whole affair will feel like a stomach punch for anybody considering cloud adoption in the coming year--especially those considering Office 365, Microsoft's major cloud offering that ties into its Office suite.
