3 ms·

Many of those IP-Paranoid companies are already using Sharepoint and Office 365 (or Google Docs) to store all that documentation.

ChuckNorris89 4y ago
Because the convenience of SharePoint and O365 is a huge productivity boost compared to having everything self hosted on-prem. Or better yet, the other way around, having everything on-prem, outside the cloud, kneecaps your productivity. Case in point, I currently work in a relatively niche cybersecurity company, so naturally, most customer stuff is done and stored on-prem for security reasons since we handle a lot of customer sensitive data and storing it in anyone's cloud is a big no-go for any customer. By far the biggest issues are managing the on-prem environment and moving the data back and fourth between the O365 environment and the on-prem environment, as the O365 environment is actively used by the customers, C-suite, business, sales and upper management, while the on-prem environment is used by the engineers, lower and middle managers, which is the biggest PITA that I have ever dealt with. Nextcloud, Thunderbird, Libre Office, Element chat etc. are great but what Microsoft offers with the O365/sharepoint ecosystem is something else and copilot will move the goalposts even further. Also, I'm not aware of Microsoft having had any data leaks or breaches, so maybe they have gained enough trust in the corporate space that makes companies at ease storing all their stuff in Microsoft's cloud for the sake of convenience.
JonChesterfield 4y ago
That also seems wild to me. It doesn't even seem to be questioned whether giving Microsoft a copy of every email you send is a good idea. Even when the emails are about contract terms with Microsoft, the conflict of interest doesn't seem to worry anyone. This whole announcement is "look how good we are at reading your internal documents" and I still don't think it's going to register on the threat model. Fortunately we can definitely trust Microsoft not to do anything unethical in the name of profits. P.s. I had a totally unsuccessful conversation with a security person who believed that the AI powered network scanning stack they used kept them safe. Secret software stack running CI on AWS, email through Microsoft. All the IP they cared about literally stored outside their fortified local network.
- maroonblazer 4y ago
  IANAL but aren't MSFT acting in the role of "data processor" (per GDPR) and so are limited in terms of what they can do with customer data?

ChuckNorris89 4y ago

Because the convenience of SharePoint and O365 is a huge productivity boost compared to having everything self hosted on-prem. Or better yet, the other way around, having everything on-prem, outside the cloud, kneecaps your productivity. Case in point, I currently work in a relatively niche cybersecurity company, so naturally, most customer stuff is done and stored on-prem for security reasons since we handle a lot of customer sensitive data and storing it in anyone's cloud is a big no-go for any customer. By far the biggest issues are managing the on-prem environment and moving the data back and fourth between the O365 environment and the on-prem environment, as the O365 environment is actively used by the customers, C-suite, business, sales and upper management, while the on-prem environment is used by the engineers, lower and middle managers, which is the biggest PITA that I have ever dealt with. Nextcloud, Thunderbird, Libre Office, Element chat etc. are great but what Microsoft offers with the O365/sharepoint ecosystem is something else and copilot will move the goalposts even further. Also, I'm not aware of Microsoft having had any data leaks or breaches, so maybe they have gained enough trust in the corporate space that makes companies at ease storing all their stuff in Microsoft's cloud for the sake of convenience.

JonChesterfield 4y ago

That also seems wild to me. It doesn't even seem to be questioned whether giving Microsoft a copy of every email you send is a good idea. Even when the emails are about contract terms with Microsoft, the conflict of interest doesn't seem to worry anyone. This whole announcement is "look how good we are at reading your internal documents" and I still don't think it's going to register on the threat model. Fortunately we can definitely trust Microsoft not to do anything unethical in the name of profits. P.s. I had a totally unsuccessful conversation with a security person who believed that the AI powered network scanning stack they used kept them safe. Secret software stack running CI on AWS, email through Microsoft. All the IP they cared about literally stored outside their fortified local network.

maroonblazer 4y ago
IANAL but aren't MSFT acting in the role of "data processor" (per GDPR) and so are limited in terms of what they can do with customer data?