cription="编辑提供的本地文件" sourcename="本地文件" src="http://img.worldinout.com/img/201601/12/140320814.jpg" alt="Trust rating for cloud firms on cards" title="" style="border: 0px none; padding: 0px; margin: 0px; width: 600px; height: 400px;" />
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Security nod must for participation in govt projects, says expert
China will soon start rating the trustworthiness of cloud computing service providers, especiallyfor government procurement contracts, a move that could potentially shut the doors to foreigncompanies, a leading expert involved in drafting the policy told China Daily on Friday.
Only companies that get full security clearance from the government will be allowed to join SmartCity and various other government-funded projects, said Zuo Xiaodong, vice-president of theChina Information Security Research Institute, an industry think-tank.
"The basic idea of the security rating mechanism is to find trustworthy hardware, software andservice providers to ensure that the government has total control of the entire ecosystem," Zuosaid.
He said the country is building a cloud security assessment, authorization and monitoring systemsimilar to the Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program adopted by the UnitedStates two years ago.
Zuo is one of the key officials involved in drafting one of the two fundamental national standardsdesigned to avoid security loopholes in for-government-use cloud products. The standards will beimplemented from April.
The new policy, however, poses a threat to the market share of overseas companies in thesector although they will be allowed to take the assessment. China may ask cloud providers tohand over key operating data and source codes for security reasons, but no overseas companyhas publicly agreed to disclose such information to the government.
Increasing IT safety concerns are pushing China to hire more local cloud technologies. A numberof projects even abandoned overseas providers for made-in-China products.
Earlier this year, Beijing-based virtualization company Sugon Information Industry Co Ltdreplaced 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 activesupporters of replacing overseas cloud products.
Wang Zhengfu, chief operating officer of Sugon, said years of heavy investment in research anddevelopment have made local firms more competitive in the market. He said the company seesthe government's security requirement a golden opportunity to take on foreign players.
Industry sources said China may want overseas IT providers - including cloud companies - out ofthe government procurement market by 2020. According to Zuo, though the government has nofixed timetable, it is "determined" to use safer IT products.
Turnover of the Chinese public cloud market is expected to exceed 6.2 billion yuan ($1 billion)this year, a 30 percent growth over the corresponding period in 2013, according to figures fromthe China Academy of Telecommunication Research under the Ministry of Industry andInformation Technology.
The academy expects the government to be the major buyer of cloud products in China.
Zhou Min, deputy director of the State Information Center, said local providers are capable ofmeeting most of the technological demands in the cloud-based public service sector. As thecountry demands a bigger say in the entire ecosystem, local companies are ready to take abigger share, he said.