back to article Who's Edward Snowden? Capita bungs its email into Microsoft's cloud

Capita will shunt thousands of employees' email into Microsoft's Office 365 cloud - except those handling sensitive government and financial work. Some 20,000 staff will migrate from on-premises systems to servers provided by the American giant "by the end of this year", Capita told The Channel. A spokeswoman for outsourcing …

COMMENTS

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  1. LarsG

    The NSA will now have access to everything without needing to ask for it.

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Ha ha ha

    "The Office 365 service will be hosted "entirely within the EU", we're told, and "complies with all current data protection regulations", according to the integrator."

    Nice one, centurion.

    1. Alan Brown Silver badge

      Re: Ha ha ha

      Any company with offices in the USA is obliged under the PATRIOT act to hand over data no matter where it is in the world.

      Very nice, Centurion. You even managed to stay stony-faced.

  3. Gordon 10
    FAIL

    So what happens the when a crapita person on the confidential side of the fence has to mail one of his colleagues on the Office 365 side of the fence with business information that the latter needs to do his job?

    CRAPITA FAIL - now theres a surprise.

  4. James 51

    If you made this stuff up an editor would give you a stern walking to about just how far you can push suspension of disbelief. Just when you think they can't make a bigger mess of things, crapita finds a way.

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    So Capita has embraced the cloud. Their lawyers have looked at the service and agreed it meets the regulations for their business. Except for FCA regulated business.

    Perhaps this should be looked at as free legal advice by anyone else considering putting FCA regulated data in the cloud (you know who you are!!!)

  6. Christian Berger

    Well... they need to be consistent

    A company responsible for outsourcing things that shouldn't be outsourced, outsources something they shouldn't even think about outsourcing. At least they are consistent.

  7. seanf

    So Capita staff will have two email accounts?

    Quote ""The current plans exclude [Financial Conduct Authority] FCA regulated and government businesses which will continue to use on-premises email services".

    So Capita staff will use different email accounts when working on different projects? Hmmm - so this is either clunky or utter bullshit.

  8. Volker Hett

    It's not about my sensitivity, I have to comply with german and european privacy laws. As long as I'm liable for any security breach I can't use cloud services by companies who have to comply with USA laws.

    Sorry, no Office 365, gmail, outlook.com, Amazon .....

  9. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Healthcare?

    What about C(r)apita and their numerous engagements in Healthcare (NHS)?

  10. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    It doesnt matter where they host it

    Microsoft is a US company subject to the patriot act so any data it processes anywhere in the world is fair game to the US government.

    Capita has effectively just handed over its entire email archive bar a few contracts to the NSA, and as its Office 365 all those lovely documents and excel spreadsheets are up for grabs as well.

    Of course the US government will never use that data for anything untoward, its only for the wars on stuff......

    1. Alan Brown Silver badge

      Re: It doesnt matter where they host it

      Actually, if capita has any offices in the USA, it's already fair game under the PATRIOT act.

      Can anyone enlighten us?

  11. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Cheapest? 99.7% uptime? Out of NSA reach?

    Nice one!

  12. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Why worry about government emails?

    Westminster is used to bending it over an biting the pillow for the USA.

    As for financial confidentiality, bankers are above the law; so who gives a shit?

  13. John Smith 19 Gold badge
    FAIL

    Where is MS's corporate HQ again? Whose laws are *it* subject to?

    THE PATRIOT act makes any such assurances meaningless

    Of course they could take a leaf out of the IBM playbook and establish a European subsidiary to handle the business.

    But do you trust MS?

  14. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Separation

    It is very easy for one business unit in Capita to remain separated from another if one is in scope for the move while another isn't. Contrary to popular opinion it is not one monolithic company but rather a group of specialist companies which share common goals. The IT services arm, for example, is a supplier to the IT dept of the resourcing arm which may also be a supplier back to the IT wing.

  15. Anonymous Coward
    Big Brother

    Hosted "entirely within the EU ..

    'The Office 365 service will be hosted "entirely within the EU", we're told, and "complies with all current data protection regulations", according to the integrator`.

    Does that mean that GCHQ won't be hoovering up the data and passing it onto the NSA, in America?

  16. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Who's Edward Snowdon?

    I'm Edward Snowdon... and so is my wife

  17. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    WTF?

    Seriously, do the people who make these decisions have an education?

    Do they read the news? do they investigate themselves?

    I hope they FULLY inform UK businesses they deal with who they use for email and their liabilities/risks... I know I would never recommend a US cloud provider to a UK/EU business for ANY sensitive data (sensitive means any personal data).

  18. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Good bloody luck

    I work for one of the Capita Financial divisions. We did a pilot of this piece of crap for 6 months. It was fracking useless, an email used to take around 53 minutes to be delivered after sending, and that was to other internal users. Some things you couldn't do unless you ran Outlook, other things you couldn't do unless you used the Web Client. It's a shambles. I'm just glad we're exempted from going down that route!

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