Brazil Challenges Microsoft to Prove its Data Cannot be Accessed by Outsiders

Microsoft may lose a lucrative cloud service contract it won in Brazil, if the global computing giant fails to prove that the data it is going to handle cannot be accessed by anyone beyond the border of the South American country.

Earlier in February this year, the Court of Justice of Sao Paulo chose Microsoft’s cloud platform to store, manage, and process its data.

Subsequently, the country’s National Justice Council suspended the deal, arguing that the contract violates the country’s data sovereignty laws.

The Council has asked Microsoft where it would store the court’s data and whether it could be accessed through foreign data centers, according to local news portal Baguete.

Cloud computing means storing and managing data using a network of remote servers hosted on the internet. Therefore, the Council wants to know the court’s data can be accessed by outsiders.

The members of the Council are also arguing that it would be wrong if a foreign company is handed the task of handling Brazil’s sensitive data, which contain many sensitive information on the country’s economy, politics and important people in the society.

The court has defended its decision, saying it had given the contract to Microsoft’s Brazilian subsidiary and cloud computing would help it save US$270 million in a data management over a period of 10 years.

Analysts say Microsoft may have to build an exclusive data center within Brazil to store the court’s data.

The Sao Paulo Court of Justice handles nearly 25% of legal disputes tried by Brazilian courts. It is comprised of  2,600 magistrates and approximately 43,000 civil servants in 320 counties of across the state.