Microsoft is among a list of tech giants that have seen their cloud storage solutions blocked in Turkey. The company’s OneDrive service has been blocked following a hacking scandal in the country. Other services affected include Dropbox, Google Drive, and GitHub. Turkey Blocks reported the situation on Sunday.
The block stems from a leak of private emails from Berat Albayrak. He is the son in law of Turkey’s President of Turkey Recep Tayyip Erdogan. The country’s Energy Minister had emails leaked by the hacktivist group known as Redhack. A report by Turkey Blocks says OneDrive, Dropbox, and Drive were shut down as a consequence. The following message greeted Google Drive users when they tried to access the service in Turkey:
“After technical analysis and legal consideration based on the Law Nr. 5651, ADMINISTRATION MEASURE has been taken for this website (drive.google.com) according to Decision Nr.490.05.01.2016.-156393 dated 08/10/2016 implemented by Information and Communication Technologies Authority.”
Microsoft @Onedrive now blocked in #Turkey, joining @GoogleDrive and @Dropbox in nationwide cloud storage shutdownhttps://t.co/xObmf8D00j pic.twitter.com/Kmc8761iH9
— Turkey Blocks (@TurkeyBlocks) October 8, 2016
Turkey’s government is described as oppressive by critics. At the very least the country has shown a strict policy towards internet freedom in the past. Previous episodes have seen Turkey block Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and other social networks.
Cloud Security
In the wake of several high-profile hacking scandals, cloud service providers will come under increased pressure to ensure their stored date is secure. Microsoft has put a big emphasis on bringing security to its cloud services. Indeed, the company focused its Ignite 2016 keynote on expanding security across all services.
Last month the company announced Project Springfield, a tool that checks software for vulnerabilities that could be exploited.
In July, the company expanded its Office 365 security features to OneDrive. Data Loss Prevention Policy Tips came to the storage solution on Windows, Android, and iOS. At the time, the company said:
“With Data Loss Prevention, documents stored in OneDrive for Business are scanned for sensitive information and evaluated against company policies configured in Office 365. As users work with documents in the mobile app, they will see a policy tip for documents that contain sensitive information. Depending on the policies and user action, the tips may provide information about what triggered a policy violation or options to override and submit a false positive report if access to the content is blocked.”
