U.S. pushes for regulation of cloud service providers

U.S. government pushes for regulation of cloud computing service providers

The U.S. government is embarking on the nation's first comprehensive plan to standardize the security practices of cloud providers such as Amazon, Microsoft, Google and Oracle, whose servers store data and store data for clients ranging from mom-and-pop businesses to the Pentagon and the CIA. Calculate ability.

The cloud computing giant provides focused targets that hackers can leverage to compromise or disable a wide range of victims at once.

The Biden administration recently said it would require cloud providers to verify the identities of their users to prevent foreign hackers from renting space on U.S. cloud servers (implementing an idea first floated in a Trump administration executive order). Last week, the U.S. government warned in its National Cybersecurity Strategy that more cloud regulations were on the horizon — and said it planned to identify and close regulatory gaps in the industry.

Officials argue that cloud providers have so far not done enough to prevent criminals and nation-state hackers from abusing their services to launch attacks within the United States ... U.S. officials have criticized cloud providers for often charging customers extra to increase Security protections have expressed great frustration - both taking advantage of the need for such measures and leaving a security hole when companies decide not to pay extra.

So the White House is planning to use every power at its disposal to make it happen — limited though they are.

“In the U.S., we don’t have a national regulator for cloud. We don’t have a Department of Communications. We don’t have anyone coming out and saying, ‘It’s our job to regulate cloud providers,’” said the Office of Strategy and Budget’s Knack. The cloud "needs to have a regulatory structure built around it," he said.

Administration officials say they see signs that attitudes among cloud providers are changing, especially as the companies increasingly look to the public sector as a source of new revenue.

"Ten years ago, they would have said, 'No way,'" Knack said. But the major cloud providers "have now realized that if they're going to achieve the growth that they want, if they're going to get into key areas, they actually need to not only get out of the way, but they need to provide the tools and the mechanisms to demonstrate compliance Sex becomes easy," he said.