The most depressing year in recent history has set its sights on Canon. As with most 2020-related problems, it's never just one thing. The biggest problem that Canon is facing is the potential loss in trust.
The last few weeks haven't been great for Canon. After having a relatively successful product launch, it was eventually somewhat marred by issues relating to overheating. Canon then had to deal with a major outage, which has led to customers losing images. This is a huge problem because the worst thing that a cloud storage company could do is lose their customers data. Canon has also confirmed that the lost data cannot be restored.
The disappointing thing is that Image.Canon as a concept is precisely where the industry needs to go. Being able to automatically upload files directly to the cloud in real-time offers a lot of convenience. The loss of data does discredit Canon as a service provider, and customers may think twice before using Image.Canon.
Most recently, Canon has been hit by a cyber attack from an organization called Maze. Tony Northrup discusses this attack in more detail in the video linked above.
Personally, I think that this could be exactly what needed to happen in order for Canon to shore up their defenses. Maybe this could be the problem that makes Canon invest a good deal of resources in order to ensure this never happens again.
Check out the full video linked above.
The rollout of any big technology project will include bugs. In this case one of those bugs was big and very, very public, and that's a black eye for Canon.
But now, having been inoculated with the vaccine of failure, Canon will redirect resources to the sort of testing and debugging they should have done earlier, and will probably be a very safe place to put your photos from here on out. It's just the nature of big tech and big corporations - they respond to a crisis, not to "what ifs" brought up by engineers in meetings.
I won't disagree that any big technology project may have bugs. But often the problems are caused by poor design. Rigorous testing of what if situations can eliminate most problems before any code is written. Canon will learn from this set of problems and produce better products and services. They may actually learn enough to be the best provider of this needed service.
Loss or stolen data is guaranteed to happen on Clouds. It's the nature of the product. It's not if but when.
I agree. I've sacrificed the convenience of the cloud and changed my workflow to include local backup on various media. If I lose my own pics, it's my own fault. Didn't want to pay monthly for anything and didn't want the chance of my photos lost or stolen online.
And there's no other source about this than this terrible Youtube channel?
I think their content is great and this was the only video I could find that included a simple yet effective explanation. In that regard, there wasn’t another source that I could find.
Well, if there's no other source, what is it doing on this site at all? That's not a very journalistic approach, is it?
What? No not source as in a place to verify from, but source as in he’s the only person that provided an explanation in a simple and easy to understand manner. The information itself has been verified by multiple sources already.
I get the feeling that you’re intentionally misunderstanding what I said.
Is Canon really a 'cloud storage company'? I would guess they just use one or more of the three big guys to put the image storage service and Canon logo on top. Many other companies do exactly the same and they, too, had their fair share of problems and data leaks and other accidents. Nothing really new. Maybe a bit unfortunate that it all comes together. One could speculate, of course, whether the hack was well timed ..
My images will never go to the cloud! So don't call that a useful feature for everyone. Be aware of the consequences of wanting to upload your data imediatly to the cloud. When i'm thinking as a criminal - i should watch your social media to know when is the time to lend some materials and of course forgetting to bring 'm back (i'm thinking as a potential thief right now). Be sure you wish this feature!
Do you trust one manufacturer for everything together concerning your photography? That's not the path i'd like to take. I'm thinking like a financial consultant that likes to spread the shares we own over several company's to spread the risks.
What i think about Nikon, Sony, Microsoft, Apple, and tons of other company's is the same. I don't want to be completely locked in into one single platform. Than you're bound and they can up the bill whenever results are not upwards! Spread your data - it'll be safer for you. It's more work - but that's the price to stay in full control.
Yep. I save everything local on drives so I have back up no matter what people throw at me. Transfer to clients via various sources with rotations. Never got to trust any cloud free or not.
The cloud as a primary storage device for photos is short sighted, inconvenient, dangerous, and unnecessary.
Cameras still have storage cards so that’s not an issue. I wouldn’t have the cloud as a primary either.
Is this just another indicator of a flawed development/ quality process across the whole of Canon?
- buggy cloud storage and lost files
- early adopters bug testing overheating issues in R5 and R6
- nearly all recent Canon product releases have been discovered to have some sort of crippled functionality
It no longer looks like each new products short comings are an intentional step towards a better next edition product.
Could it simply be that Canon Marketing has just become so good at headlining new functions whilst covering their backs deep in the small print, that R&D and QA expenditure is being saved?
I am a Canon user but for how much longer?
If I use a cloud storage service, I also back up locally. Shit happens.
Let me say this: there are those companies who have been breached and those who haven't yet been breached. Those are the only two categories. In other words, it is like blaming the householder for the burglary because they didn't have enough security cameras and a sufficiently clever burglar alarm. Canon's only mistake here was not backing up their client's images. What that entails is having twice as much storage, which means that it will cost twice as much to run. All users should have their images in multiple places so that if one storage portal fails, they can recover them. I have all my images backed up using a cloud backup system. So should all of you, unless you really don't care about losing them. And in fact, if you can afford it, in multiple sites. For example, Smugmug provides unlimited storage of your images, for a paltry amount per month. Unfortunately that doesn't mean RAW images, only jpeg, but it does mean a copy of your images in the cloud. My point here is that there is no substitute for having copies of your data in multiple secure locations. Oh, and then testing restore capabilities. Test whether you can actually restore data from those backup/storage locations. The price of freedom is eternal vigilance. The price of data integrity is eternally ensuring you have good systems in place and that part of that is testing, testing, monitoring, testing. My backup provider sends me a message every day to tell me that all is well.
With regard to losing customers' data: well, again, Image.Canon obviously needs to be more robust. Just like Adobe's system, and others. The real answer here is to not rely on one provider. There is always a chance that a system will fail or be hacked, no matter how good the security is. So, again, use multiple providers.