- Switzerland’s Army chief Thomas Süssli wants to stop the introduction of Microsoft Office 365 in the army
- Confidential data should not be stored in the US cloud, so the software is hardly usable and too expensive
- He is calling for a separate, secure and private, Open Source-based IT solution - the Federal Chancellery is sticking with the Microsoft project for the time being
- The background to Süssli’s warning is also the US “Cloud Act”, which allows American authorities access to data - even if it is located in data centers outside the USA
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He [Süssli] is therefore calling for an exit strategy from the Microsoft cloud and the development of a private or open source-based solution. This is the only way for the army to retain full control over its data.
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Any network connected software from an American company has been too risky since at least the days of the Patriot Act, double so since the Cloud Act.
The same thing applies to software from British companies, for similar reasons (differently named legislation but same kind of objective and similar systemic structures for the same kind of surveillance of other countries and industrial espionage, which ARE used in practice, as shown when the GCHQ was caught using the systems of Belgacomm to evesdrop on EU politicians and by a lot of what came out in the Snowden Revelations).
So Windows itself is a massive security risk for any non-American state operations (not just Military but for example most of the Justice System and anybody dealing with personal information that can be used to blackmail important people) as well as any company which competes with a large US based company.
This is old news, since Süssli has left his position in 2025. However, his opinion is true and luckily, the Cyber Command already decided to ditch M365 and use Open Source.
My problem with this whole topic is, that M365 has been evaluated since 2020. So every security officer, including CISO, who approved M365, should be thrown out.
It’s crazy to me that these people have faced next to no repercussions for so long that they don’t even try to do their job well. You would think that out of anyone militaries would attempt to secure their communications. (Or maybe thats the facade they put forward and just kill you if they catch you breaching data?).
How is using a datacenter in a different countries even legal for such purposes? Why wouldn’t they run on-prem servers with redundancy across their own country? Fuckin’ mental.
“Because we talked with Microsoft and they guaranteed that no data will leave the data center at location X” 🤡
In my company dude believes it and makes everyone use claude. It is a huge Bank with many online services
To be fair, reality is actually worse than that, since M$ has already said under oath during a trial in France that it is unable to protect the data of EU customers from the prying eyes of Gringoland’s authorities. Switzerland is not EU, but of course the same applies.
As an American, he’s not wrong. Our government is absolutely not to be trusted and will abuse any power you give them to advance their own personal interests (which align with the current highest bidder, flatterer, or Israel).
Please get out while you can.
As another American I second this.
Relying on one American company as the sole OS and office suite supplier being a terrible idea should have been obvious like 20 years ago at least, but at this point I’ll take any win.
It is not about functionality. It is about money
Yes, but I have a nitpick: it’s not only true for U.S. companies but extends to all others. Particularly China has a law similar to the U.S.Cloud Act …
I’m really sad that the Swiss Army Chief does not have an awl and corkscrew readily available.
Good news aside, Süssli has to be the most amogus-sounding real surname i ever heard
The US Cloud act is an attack on sovereignty. All countries must abandon the cloud and us tech with all haste or suffer the consequences.
Sounds reasonable.
The more headlines like this that do the rounds the less people roll their eyes at me when I tell them I will not have Windows 11 in my house and proceed to preach the virtues of Linux haha
Monopolies squelch innovation and encourage corruption. I love that Europe is pushing away from the Microsoft monopoly on multiple fronts.
Yes the way Microsoft has tried to steer everyone from complete ownership of our purchase to renting what they keep owning is devious as hell.
