Cloudy with a chance of oversight: That's the latest forecast from the Federal Trade Commission.
FTC chair Lina Khan said during a November open meeting with lawmakers and members of the public that her agency expects to increase scrutiny of cloud computing, because of its ubiquity and its position in a market dominated mainly by three providers: Amazon, Microsoft, and Google.
“Because cloud computing increasingly serves as key infrastructure, it has been raising a whole set of competition and consumer protection questions, including whether firms may be using their dominance in ways that undermine fair competition,” Khan said. “And whether dominance in this market may heighten fragility, creating a single point of failure or risk to data security.”
Business is booming. As IT Brew previously reported, cloud computing roles dominate the certification market. And while some C-suiters are reconsidering their investment in the cloud, the sector remains strong. Hence, Khan said during her remarks, the agency’s focus.
“This is a market that’s not always super visible to everyday people, but behind the scenes it increasingly plays a critical role,” Khan said. “Companies across the economy rely on cloud providers to power their services, as does the US government.”
The FTC is currently conducting an inquiry into the cloud sector, having called for public comment back in March. And, Khan noted, her staff has “been bringing a whole set of enforcement actions relating to lax data security practices in the cloud”—the scrutiny is “not new.”
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Khan and her colleagues at the FTC—Deputy Assistant Director of the Technology Enforcement Division Krisha Cerilli and Senior Director of Technology Competition Policy Morten Skroejer—addressed competition issues around the cloud technology business. Cerilli pointed to software licensing, egress fees, and minimum-spend contracts as potentially hurting the sector by concentrating power in a few large companies.
“A number of comments suggested that various services within the cloud stack have only a limited number of major suppliers and raise concerns that certain practices may hamper competition,” Cerilli said.
Always time for AI. FTC staffers also emphasized the sector’s importance to the developing AI market. FTC Senior Technology Advisor Amritha Jayanti also noted the potential threats posed by the new technology, and the role of the federal government in managing the danger.
“The risks involved with voice cloning and other AI technology cannot be addressed by technology alone,” Jayanti said. “It is also clear that policymakers cannot count on self-regulation alone to protect the public.”