Thursday 21 November 2013

PRISM is unfortunate but irrelevant, says Salesforce CEO

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SAN FRANCISCO: US cloud service supplier Salesforce claims the National Security Agency (NSA) never touched its data while running its PRISM spy campaign.
Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff said the PRISM debate and campaign is not relevant to the company, during a Q&A session at Dreamforce 2013, attended by V3.
"In regards to PRISM, obviously there has been a huge amount of PR around it, but this is outside of our world. It's not what we do and not the sort of thing we'd be involved in. We manage a different type of information," he said. "It hasn't been an issue for us. I understand what's happened and view it as an unfortunate situation."
PRISM is a cyber-spying campaign by the NSA to gather web user data from numerous technology companies including Google, Facebook and Microsoft. News of the campaign broke earlier this year when whistleblower Edward Snowden leaked confidential documents to the media.
The scandal is believed to have damaged the cloud industry and has led many businesses to rethink their use of US-based services. In October Deutsche Telekom confirmed it is exploring ways to alter its systems to only run information on its network through local data centres and servers.
Executive vice president of Salesforce Platform Mike Rosenbaum reiterated Benioff's comments, saying that even though PRISM didn't impact the company, it is taking measures to allay European customers' concerns.
"We work with customers in Europe to make sure they trust us. For example, we're actively working to build a data centre in the UK. When it comes to the trust and security of customers' data, there's nothing more important than that for us," he said. "We are working with some of the biggest brands in Europe to build a platform they continue to trust."
Many other US-based cloud service providers have reported a downturn in business since PRISM. The Information Technology and Innovation Foundation estimates that PRISM will cost US cloud companies $35bn. Despite the forecast Salesforce reported posting its first $1bn quarter on Monday.

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