Vulnerable cloud services cast shadow over national security

TOKYO -- Cloud outsourcing has become an indispensable part of digital society, but concern is mounting about the risk of entrusting personal as well as national data to such services.

About half the cloud service providers in Japan and abroad lack adequate internal guidelines on how to cope with regulatory and other official requests for user account data, according to a joint survey by Nikkei and Assured, a Tokyo security assessment company. Some vendors also store information on servers in China and Russia, where censorship is a major concern.