The news from these two past weeks allows us to closely follow the technical hiccup which has occurred on the Sidekick mobile phones associated with T-Mobile and Microsoft, resulting in the loss of several thousands of subscribers’ personal data due to a maintenance operation which turned out badly.

In summary, a problem occurred at the manufacturer (Danger, subsidiary of Microsoft) servers (hosted in the cloud) and as a result, the personal data stored on the phones – unfortunately delivered without any backup software – were purely and simply erased

This will result in a lot more fear than pain, since the companies involved will restore almost completely all of the data, but nonetheless these subscribers came close to a disaster!

Obviously traumatizing, this event immediately generated a lot of questions – quite legitimate – on the security front. Basically, what one can expect to find in the cloud and the danger that this technology potentially represents.

Consequently, after all of the legitimate enthusiasm surrounding the cloud shown in the press these last months, we heard just heard the worst about cloud-computing!

Then, what is it really? A few days ago (10/20/09), Gartner declared that Cloud Computing was to be placed first in IT investment priorities in terms of 2010 (http://bit.ly/3dNGom). Does Gartner show an unawareness of the security issues? Of course, not!

It is the same for the cloud-computing as it is for any company’s strategic application: it should be made safe and highly secure.

In conclusion, two precautions impossible to circumvent (our priority at ftopia, of course!) are to be taken in order to avoid the consequences of a technical failure: 1) your data must be automatically made redundant on geographically distant servers and 2) it must be synchronized with your PC, which represents an additional security measure that makes a great difference in the event of breakdown – even temporary – of one or more servers.

François-Pierre Le Page, Founder and Managing Director of Mobilegov France S.A.: “Security is often viewed as an obstacle in the use of PC applications. At Mobilegov however, we believe it to be a facilitator by supporting the adoption of SaaS services by companies” declares  “This partnership reaffirms this belief, as it will allow our customers to combine identity-based security with the simplicity of use of the online storage spaces offered by ftopia”.

A value-added offer for the professional

ftopia provides collaborative sharing spaces and file storage online. Particularly useful to SME’s as well as to professional organizations and free lancers, ftopia makes it possible to exchange any document efficiently and easily with remote third parties or colleagues, in a safe and simple way – without the need for IT assistance.

The integration of these solutions will therefore make it possible for the professional user to create virtual spaces protected by two-factor authentication, while being freed from traditional tokens, key fobs etc., which are expensive to purchase and difficult to manage. Moreover, the joint solution will be available in SaaS mode, without requiring new IT investment or software installation on the users PC’s or laptops.

Safety is a legitimate concern of any individual or organization in adopting SaaS solutions. At ftopia, we have made it an essential element of our product development strategy. We are very pleased about this partnership with Mobilegov whose unique authentication technology will provide unrivaled protection to our customer’s data