Google has agreed to house Macquarie's data in the European Union as part of its hosting agreement with the university, The Australian reports. The arrangement stems from the university's fears that data hosted in the U.S. would be subject to the USA Patriot Act, which would potentially allow security agencies to override privacy restrictions in order to combat terrorism. The university is the first in Australia to move staff e-mail to the so-called cloud. Macquarie Chief Information Officer Marc Bailey dismissed concerns about the security of intellectual property and academic privacy on the cloud, saying that storing data with companies such as Google and Microsoft provides significantly more security than a university.
Full Story