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The following content is from an older version of this website, and may not display correctly.China is planning to start rating the ‘trustworthiness’ of cloud computing service providers, particularly those bidding for government contracts, a move that could: “… potentially shut the doors to foreign companies,” a security consultant involved in drafting the policy told the newspaper China Dailyon Friday.
This will affect any foreign hopeful attempting to join any government-funded projects, said Zuo Xiaocdong, vice-president of the China Information Security Research Institute. Government projects are the most lucrative and safest of Chinese cloud projects for foreign investors.
Total government control?
“The basic idea of the security rating mechanism is to find trustwor
thy hardware, software and service providers to ensure that the government has total control of the entire ecosystem,” Zuo (right) said.
He said the country is building a cloud security assessment, authorization and monitoring system similar to the Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program adopted by the United States two years ago.
Increasing privacy concerns mean that China is using more ‘local’ cloud technologies. Some Government projects have been abandoned because of security concerns.
Earlier this year, Beijing-based virtualization company Sugon Information Industry Co Ltd replaced VMware Inc, a US firm, in a high-profile cloud project in Wuxi, Jiangsu province.
Sugon, Alibaba Group Holding Ltd and Huawei Technologies Co Ltd are among the most active supporters of replacing overseas cloud products.
Wang Zhengfu, chief operating officer of Sugon, said years of heavy investment in research and development make local firms more competitive in the market. He said the company sees the government’s security requirement as a golden opportunity to take on foreign players.