It's a common practice for Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Apple and other tech giants engaged in providing services over the Internet to replicate data in multiple datacenters. This is done to ensure quick customer access to the information, and for disaster recovery purposes.

But the practice of storing data collected from individual citizens in far flung storage facilities has raised the hackles of Europe's leaders. They were already on edge about privacy. And Edward Snowden's whistle blowing made matters much worse. CyberTruth asked Bill Hackenberger, CEO of encryption vendor HighCloud Security to connect a few dots.

CT: How would you describe the central conflict between US cloud service providers and European privacy regulators to a lay person?

Hackenberger: US-based cloud service providers are storing data from many companies, including those with offices abroad. EU privacy regulations are fairly stringent, in many cases mandating that certain information about its citizens not cross EU borders.

CT: How has the Snowden affair exacerbated this conflict?

The allegations by Snowden would indicate that the US government has been actively requesting or capturing data about non-US entities from cloud service providers in the interest of national security, and without notifying the data owner. This is an obvious escalation from data simply being moved across borders to data being potentially accessed, creating concern for international companies about their data privacy.

CT: As plainly as possible, can you outline how new encryption services from vendors like HighCloud, CipherCloud , AlephCloud and others could help resolve this conflict?

Hackenberger: The most important part of encryption is how you manage the encryption keys. If you encrypt the data before it goes to a cloud service provider or do the encryption within your cloud instance, but maintain the encryption keys yourself, you dramatically reduce the ability for an unauthorized party to access the data without your knowledge.

CT: Anything else?

Hackenberger: Make sure the encryption and key management technology selected is designed for virtualized server infrastructures, as this is the backbone of the cloud. Also make sure that key management is secure, scalable and enterprise ready.

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