Adobe Data Breach: Will Skeptical Cloud Users Exit?

This was the last thing Adobe needed: Another blemish to tarnish the reputation of its cloud services. As Adobe tries to shift customers to cloud services like Creative Cloud, the company has suffered a setback. Hackers have exposed approximately 2.9 million users’ personal data.

Although it’s not yet clear how many of those users were cloud users, the Internet gossip is that Creative Cloud and Revel users are among the worst affected by the data breach. What seems to have happened is hackers broke into Adobe’s servers to swipe software source code, and according to a blog post by Brad Arkin, Adobe’s chief security officer, Adobe has been attracted more and more attention from cyber-attackers.

And things look pretty bad.

“Our investigation currently indicates that the attackers accessed Adobe customer IDs and encrypted passwords on our systems. We also believe the attackers removed from our systems certain information relating to 2.9 million Adobe customers, including customer names, encrypted credit or debit card numbers, expiration dates, and other information relating to customer orders,” Arkin wrote.

Now, Adobe did good by coming out to the public quickly and starting to make changes to its policies to take precautions against unauthorized access to Adobe accounts, but it’s a security breach that could have long-lasting effects for Adobe. Trust is never an easy thing to regain.

In theory, this breach could have affected anyone from Creative Cloud subscribers to Adobe Digital Editions users (ahead, hackers, take a look at my Kobo reading list, but don’t judge me!). The extent of the damage to cloud customers may never be fully known, but when it comes to Adobe, the cloud is a contentious issue with its Creative Suite customers. This could be one more reason for customers to avoid switching to the cloud versions of Creative Suite — something that they will soon either have to accept or find an alternate product.