5 ms·

So many companies that legally required a server physically located in Canada are going to be running to AWS now, practically everyone touching health care, gov

So many companies that legally required a server physically located in Canada are going to be running to AWS now, practically everyone touching health care, government, personal data, or even getting some level of government funding likely was obligated to keep things within Canadian borders.

davidjgraph 10y ago
How can you be sure that data transmitting between the centre and user in Canada doesn't leave Canadian borders?
- a-priori 10y ago
  You can't. Most data transmitted between cities in Canada goes through the US. The only mitigation is to make sure you encrypt everything in transit and ensure that the private keys never leave Canada.
  - toomuchtodo 10y ago
    And please please please make sure your server is configured to support Perfect Forward Secrecy. https://www.ssllabs.com/projects/best-practices/ https://www.ssllabs.com/projects/best-practices/
    - luhn 10y ago
      A good source for the recommended SSL configuration for Apache, nginx, et al.: https://mozilla.github.io/server-side-tls/ssl-config-generator/ https://mozilla.github.io/server-side-tls/ssl-config-generat...
- mynameisvlad 10y ago
  I don't believe there's any requirements for the data to never cross borders on transmission, just that it must be stored in Canada.
  - unfocused 10y ago
    IT Manager in the Canadian Government here. There is indeed a requirement stating that data must not cross the border. This requirement though depends on the department and level of information security. Whether or not AWS, Azure, etc. can meet this...I honestly don't know.
    - nilved 10y ago
      You should quit
    - mynameisvlad 10y ago
      Yes, for government entities, but the rest of the comments here are talking about businesses, which are going to be the primary consumers of AWS in Canada. There's probably many more requirements that would be needed to be met for any cloud provider to be used for governments. I don't believe any provinces have requirements on border crossing, and there's no federal requirement on data sovereignty at all for private corporations.
      - grecy 10y ago
        I worked for a very, very big Canadian telco. Same requirement - data must not leave Canada, which ruled out basically all "hosted solutions"
        mynameisvlad 10y ago
        It would be virtually impossible to comply with the never crossing the border as part of a fast link even if you hosted your own data unless you controlled every part of the link. http://www.servercloudcanada.com/2015/09/canadian-privacy-laws-canadian-cloud-primer-canadian-businesses/ http://www.servercloudcanada.com/2015/09/canadian-privacy-la... There are only 3 provinces that require storage in Canada: BC, NS and QC. And even then, that is for public sector organizations only.
        10y ago
- psybin 10y ago
  It almost certainly goes through the US no matter what you do. Traffic going anywhere out of my city first drops down to a big peer exchange in the US, then back up into Canada.
  - betaby 10y ago
    Mind to share a trace route to such destinations?
  - voltagex_ 10y ago
    That's odd. I know traceroutes don't always show the truth, but when I was there I could route between Victoria and Vancouver without going through the US, at least. No idea about Vancouver to Montreal.
mynameisvlad 10y ago
Azure has had two Canadian data centers for half a year now if I'm not mistaken, so it's not like companies didn't have options, not even counting small Canadian providers that I'm sure also have offerings for people who need them.
- ohstopitu 10y ago
  Actually, when I worked at MS, one of the main reasons for slow Azure adoption in Canada was the lack of a datacenter in the country - IBM had one before Azure and almost all major bank providers had contracts with IBM. However, in the last year, almost all major banks have moved to Azure and from what I've heard - a lot of companies don't mind it as much, but employees wanted to use AWS (familiarity I guess). That said, MS has been on a hiring spree for TSPs and TAMs to expand as much as possible so it'll be fun to see what Amazon does to compete.
giarc 10y ago
I work for a large healthcare organization and multiple times have seen group messages instructing staff not to use surveymonkey since the data was hosted in the States, and something about the Patriot act allowing US authorities to view the data without warrants or something.
- msbarnett 10y ago
  I've worked with several larger institutions where Dropbox was verboten because of concerns about data crossing into the US for storage.
- nacho2sweet 10y ago
  I work in education, and in BC we have the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act (FIPPA) that stops us from using anything good. SurveyMonkey just went and bought a Canadian run survey company and moved all the servers, we had to drop our contracts... everyone is left without anything. We def can't use Dropbox, Google Docs/Drive, anything above Office 2010. Slack is frowned upon even. It is kind of brutal.
  - mynameisvlad 10y ago
    > Office 2010 Why would FIPPA affect Office versions past 2010? 2013, 2015 and 2016 are available as standalone (non-365 subscription) versions, and regardless of your purchase model (subscription, retail, volume, etc) you can still store documents locally.
    - Spooky23 10y ago
      Unless you mandate specific configuration controls, most office installations make it easy to accidentally save data to the public OneDrive offering.
      - mynameisvlad 10y ago
        Okay, sure, you may need extra configuration. But parent said "can't".
ibejoeb 10y ago
Yup. I've been eagerly awaiting this since they announced earlier this year. I was getting worried I'd have to contract with a different provider. I'm a heavy RDS user, too, so I wasn't looking forward to it.

davidjgraph 10y ago

How can you be sure that data transmitting between the centre and user in Canada doesn't leave Canadian borders?

a-priori 10y ago
You can't. Most data transmitted between cities in Canada goes through the US. The only mitigation is to make sure you encrypt everything in transit and ensure that the private keys never leave Canada.
- toomuchtodo 10y ago
  And please please please make sure your server is configured to support Perfect Forward Secrecy. https://www.ssllabs.com/projects/best-practices/ https://www.ssllabs.com/projects/best-practices/
  - luhn 10y ago
    A good source for the recommended SSL configuration for Apache, nginx, et al.: https://mozilla.github.io/server-side-tls/ssl-config-generator/ https://mozilla.github.io/server-side-tls/ssl-config-generat...
mynameisvlad 10y ago
I don't believe there's any requirements for the data to never cross borders on transmission, just that it must be stored in Canada.
- unfocused 10y ago
  IT Manager in the Canadian Government here. There is indeed a requirement stating that data must not cross the border. This requirement though depends on the department and level of information security. Whether or not AWS, Azure, etc. can meet this...I honestly don't know.
  - nilved 10y ago
    You should quit
  - mynameisvlad 10y ago
    Yes, for government entities, but the rest of the comments here are talking about businesses, which are going to be the primary consumers of AWS in Canada. There's probably many more requirements that would be needed to be met for any cloud provider to be used for governments. I don't believe any provinces have requirements on border crossing, and there's no federal requirement on data sovereignty at all for private corporations.
    - grecy 10y ago
      I worked for a very, very big Canadian telco. Same requirement - data must not leave Canada, which ruled out basically all "hosted solutions"
      - mynameisvlad 10y ago
        It would be virtually impossible to comply with the never crossing the border as part of a fast link even if you hosted your own data unless you controlled every part of the link. http://www.servercloudcanada.com/2015/09/canadian-privacy-laws-canadian-cloud-primer-canadian-businesses/ http://www.servercloudcanada.com/2015/09/canadian-privacy-la... There are only 3 provinces that require storage in Canada: BC, NS and QC. And even then, that is for public sector organizations only.
        10y ago
psybin 10y ago
It almost certainly goes through the US no matter what you do. Traffic going anywhere out of my city first drops down to a big peer exchange in the US, then back up into Canada.
- betaby 10y ago
  Mind to share a trace route to such destinations?
- voltagex_ 10y ago
  That's odd. I know traceroutes don't always show the truth, but when I was there I could route between Victoria and Vancouver without going through the US, at least. No idea about Vancouver to Montreal.

mynameisvlad 10y ago

Azure has had two Canadian data centers for half a year now if I'm not mistaken, so it's not like companies didn't have options, not even counting small Canadian providers that I'm sure also have offerings for people who need them.

ohstopitu 10y ago
Actually, when I worked at MS, one of the main reasons for slow Azure adoption in Canada was the lack of a datacenter in the country - IBM had one before Azure and almost all major bank providers had contracts with IBM. However, in the last year, almost all major banks have moved to Azure and from what I've heard - a lot of companies don't mind it as much, but employees wanted to use AWS (familiarity I guess). That said, MS has been on a hiring spree for TSPs and TAMs to expand as much as possible so it'll be fun to see what Amazon does to compete.

giarc 10y ago

I work for a large healthcare organization and multiple times have seen group messages instructing staff not to use surveymonkey since the data was hosted in the States, and something about the Patriot act allowing US authorities to view the data without warrants or something.

msbarnett 10y ago
I've worked with several larger institutions where Dropbox was verboten because of concerns about data crossing into the US for storage.
nacho2sweet 10y ago
I work in education, and in BC we have the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act (FIPPA) that stops us from using anything good. SurveyMonkey just went and bought a Canadian run survey company and moved all the servers, we had to drop our contracts... everyone is left without anything. We def can't use Dropbox, Google Docs/Drive, anything above Office 2010. Slack is frowned upon even. It is kind of brutal.
- mynameisvlad 10y ago
  > Office 2010 Why would FIPPA affect Office versions past 2010? 2013, 2015 and 2016 are available as standalone (non-365 subscription) versions, and regardless of your purchase model (subscription, retail, volume, etc) you can still store documents locally.
  - Spooky23 10y ago
    Unless you mandate specific configuration controls, most office installations make it easy to accidentally save data to the public OneDrive offering.
    - mynameisvlad 10y ago
      Okay, sure, you may need extra configuration. But parent said "can't".

ibejoeb 10y ago

Yup. I've been eagerly awaiting this since they announced earlier this year. I was getting worried I'd have to contract with a different provider. I'm a heavy RDS user, too, so I wasn't looking forward to it.