By Craig McLellan, Founder and CEO, ThinkOn
This is Part 2 of a 2-part blog series on anticompetition in cloud computing. To read Part 1, click here.
When I founded ThinkOn in 2013, 17 cyberattacks had been reported in the new millennium, including an attack on Adobe, which impacted 38 million users. Governments and charity organizations had also been targeted, and Edward Snowden released classified information from the NSA network.[1]
Today, companies face an estimated 2,200 cyberattacks per day, worldwide, with each organization facing an average of 1,248 attacks per week.[2] Cybersecurity is a growing concern, and there’s one area of protection from cyberattack that often gets overlooked: data sovereignty.
A fair playing field means everyone plays nice—and everyone wins
Anti-competition and compliance laws are designed to promote healthy competition and keep everyone playing by the same rules. Without these regulations, some companies think it’s okay to use their vast resources to prevent businesses with new ideas from entering or surviving in the market. That suppresses innovation, increases prices, and gives the bigger companies the power to sell products and services on their own terms, often locking customers into contracts that don’t serve their long-term needs or provide inferior outcomes.
In the cloud computing arena, this scenario has become an all-too-real challenge for global organizations. Regulators in many countries are starting to question the power of the big three cloud providers to hold organizations hostage by forcing them to accept undesirable terms, including budget-guzzling cloud applications and exorbitant fees to move data out of their cloud.
This has raised serious concerns about the impacts of these anti-competition policies on organizations, and their ability to use additional resources and multicloud or hybrid cloud solutions to counter cyberattacks.
Climbing the beanstalk: Are the tech giants getting too big?
The U.S. government and concerned stakeholders have begun to question the practices of digital juggernauts and their ability to leverage the power of their massive digital networks to force customers into a digital ecosystem that may not protect them.
According to the Brookings Roundtable, a group of experts and stakeholders in antitrust, privacy, cybersecurity, and national security, “…network effects tilt the playing field in favor of the large platforms. These firms frequently require sellers on their platforms to adhere to their privacy and access rules, even where such rules have the effect, whether intended or not, of limiting competition and reinforcing platform dominance.”[3]
By restricting competition and limiting customer choice in cloud providers, these foreign-owned cloud providers stifle collaboration and cooperation among innovators and data security experts. That gives hackers the edge when choosing their next victim and prevents companies from co-innovating new solutions.
Cybersecurity: What the bullies don’t tell you
All the foreign-owned hyperscalers rely on third-party resources to manage data in their clouds. For customers locked in to stringent contracts with high fees, this is a serious vulnerability, especially for public service organizations and other customers who manage sensitive data.
In a recent CNBC article, Rohan Goswami outlines one of the hyperscalers’ data security concerns due to vendor lock-in, “Google also said such control represents a significant national security and cybersecurity risk. It highlighted successive cyberattacks involving Microsoft products, including the SolarWinds breach.”[4]
The SolarWinds incident remains one of the biggest cybersecurity breaches in history and is a chilling example of the dangers of relying on third-party resources for tech services.
Data sovereignty is lost when offshore contractors or foreign governments gain access to domestic data. In the case of SolarWinds, a U.S. software company that provides technical services for Microsoft, hackers stole the data of hundreds of thousands of customers.
According to Saheed Oladimeji and Sean Michael Kerner in TechTarget, “The SolarWinds hack was a major event…because it triggered a much larger supply chain incident that affected thousands of organizations, including the U.S. government.”[5]
Safeguarding data sovereignty so that only trusted domestic partners have access helps protect sensitive data from cyberbreach. At ThinkOn, we are a Sovereign Cloud provider, which ensures that domestic data never leaves its borders of origin—preventing a supply chain disaster like the one at SolarWinds.
We’re also launching plans to grow into new global markets and create more of our own intellectual property to help data (and our partners’ businesses) thrive. We never charge ingress or egress fees, and we support hybrid and multicloud computing as critical to our partners’ and customers’ success.
A secure commitment to make data thrive
The Thinkers at ThinkOn are committed to data sovereignty because we know that security and compliance are the cornerstones of fair play. If we want to keep the bad guys out, we need to work together as an industry to respect the privacy and sovereignty of the countries where we do business. And that means we must all play by the same rules.
Let’s build a future where fair competition and data sovereignty thrive hand in hand. See how we play fair.
[1] Akhil Bhadwal. 2023. “The History of Cyber Security: A Detailed Guide.” The Knowledge Hut. https://www.knowledgehut.com/blog/security/history-of-cyber-security
[2] Alessandro Mascellino. 2023. “Global Cyber Attacks Rise by 7% in Q1 2023.” Infosecurity Magazine. https://www.infosecurity-magazine.com/news/global-cyber-attacks-rise-7-q1-2023/
[3] Brookings, Stephanie K. Pell and Bill Baer. 2022. “Protecting national security, cybersecurity, and privacy while ensuring competition.” Brookings. https://www.brookings.edu/articles/protecting-national-security-cybersecurity-and-privacy-while-ensuring-competition/
[4] Rohan Goswami. 2023. “Google accuses Microsoft of unfair practices in Azure cloud unit.” CNBC. https://www.cnbc.com/2023/06/21/google-accuses-microsoft-of-anticompetitive-practices-in-azure-cloud.html
[5] Oladimeji, Saheed and Sean Michael Kerner. 2023.“SolarWinds hack explained: Everything you need to know.” TechTarget. https://www.techtarget.com/whatis/feature/SolarWinds-hack-explained-Everything-you-need-to-know