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Data, NDAs and the forced clouds (i.e. OneDrive)
Thread poster: Philippe Locquet
Philippe Locquet
Philippe Locquet  Identity Verified
Portugal
Local time: 07:09
English to French
+ ...
Feb 17, 2023

Hi,

Just wanted to get some feedback. In Windows 11 OneDrive if forced onto users (although there are ways to control it, many users won’t know how or bother changing settings), often without realizing it.
The “Documents” folder, to which many CAT default to in order to save data and documents is de facto synced to the OneDrive cloud when defaults settings are left unchanged. This means that for people translating sensitive material, taking the extra care to work with on... See more
Hi,

Just wanted to get some feedback. In Windows 11 OneDrive if forced onto users (although there are ways to control it, many users won’t know how or bother changing settings), often without realizing it.
The “Documents” folder, to which many CAT default to in order to save data and documents is de facto synced to the OneDrive cloud when defaults settings are left unchanged. This means that for people translating sensitive material, taking the extra care to work with online tools turned off (MT and others) will end up having source material and bilingual material synchronized with the cloud.
My take is that regarding security breaches, Microsoft in general and One Drive in that case are fairly robust.
Do you feel like this can be a problem for translators under NDA where clients are very concerned about where their data travels?

NB: it’s clear that for total data isolation, a computer without internet and files exchanged physically between client and translator would be necessary. So, a certain amount of internet use will be required for the vast majority of jobs anyway.

Pushing to the cloud seems to be the current trend in big tech, so I wouldn’t be surprised if that happens in other ecosystems.
Be well 😊 ▲ Collapse


Marina Aleyeva
 
Samuel Murray
Samuel Murray  Identity Verified
Netherlands
Local time: 08:09
Member (2006)
English to Afrikaans
+ ...
Deliberate Feb 17, 2023

Philippe Locquet wrote:
Do you feel like this can be a problem for translators under NDA where clients are very concerned about where their data travels?

I do not think that using an online storage or backup system is necessarily against NDAs. Anything can be hacked, so the important thing is to ensure that you have taken reasonable precautions when selecting a backup provider. However, I do think that translators should use online storage only deliberately. The fact that Windows creates an online backup for you as a courtesy doesn't excuse you from due diligence -- if a computer has default settings that can endanger the client's data, then the user of that computer is responsible for changing those settings.

Jorge Payan
Philippe Locquet
Christel Zipfel
Thayenga
 
Tom in London
Tom in London
United Kingdom
Local time: 07:09
Member (2008)
Italian to English
the trillions of spam e-mails sent every year is equivalent to powering two million homes in the US Feb 18, 2023

The dark side of cloud computing: soaring carbon emissions

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2010/apr/30/cloud-computing-carbon-emissions

Philippe Locquet
 


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Data, NDAs and the forced clouds (i.e. OneDrive)






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