NSA snooping is hurting U.S. tech companies’ bottom line

There has been a lot of speculation that the revelations about NSA surveillance program PRISM damaged the credibility of U.S. tech companies, especially with international clients who were the primary targets of the snooping operation. But now it’s starting to look like the snooping is hitting U.S.-based cloud providers where it really hurts: Their pocketbooks.

Computer World UK reports a recent Cloud Security Alliance (CSA) survey found 10 percent of 207 officials at non-U.S. companies canceled contracts with U.S. providers after the leaks, and 56 percent of non-U.S. respondents are now hesitant to work with U.S.-based cloud operators. This is bad news for U.S. tech companies because cloud computing and storage is a huge, expanding market. Research firm Gartner forecasts the public cloud services market will grow 18.5 percent in 2013 to a total of $131 billion worldwide.