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Security in the age of cloud computing and IoT is a huge challenge. I do not think we should start on that discussion here. But you guys seem to assume that that means we can resort to the old ways of doing business - That NI and others should not leverage these things fully, but try to guide their users to the old ways by making sure the new ones are intentionally crippled. The fact is that most of us are way down the rabbit hole already, ignoring the risks because the benefits are too enticing or the business or societal pressure too high. If people can make a business of delivering services that are at the same level of risk as the customer is already taking in other areas (in fact in the particular case that triggered my interest in this - the security would be improved compared to the current solution - imagine that), but NI is holding them back because they think the security challenges has to be 100% solved first...well...that is a recipe for a dwindling business. The starting point of my digression was something that the supplier in fact is already partly working on. They just have not gotten around to it yet. So it is not like you are defending something that they themselves think is the holy grail of security limitations either. Arguing that the current solution is as good as it gets is never really a winning strategy.

Old fashioned it may be but you seem to have a surprising high trust in Microsoft, Google, Amazon and CO to not only be able to secure their infrastructure beyond any doubt but also to never turn evil from inside and scan your files no matter what. Ohh wait Google does that already, their user rights document you have to agree to to use their cloud services specifically states that they are allowed to scan your documents for service improvement purposes. In terms of Google that also means to improve their ad business revenues, it's after all still their core business with which they grew to the multi-multi billion $$ business they are nowadays. Sure they have other business diversifications that start to get important too, but the "Don't do evil" slogan from early days Google has long been abolished. 😄 Microsoft, Amazon and all the rest are businesses too, and when they believe they can get away with something to improve the revenue numbers under the final accounting line they will do it, as is their holy duty in the name of our modern day golden calf called shareholder value! 😄 But the real danger is not only evil intent, it is simply neglect! There is not a single week in recent years where not some server out there is discovered to expose very sensitive data to the broad lovely and always friendly internet. Cloud services being the core business of those business units from these companies makes them of course try hard to avoid such issues but errors often lie in very small corners but are so easily done. System Link cloud service being in fact outsourced to a real cloud service (NI doesn't want to go into running their own cloud service business anytime soon) doesn't make that less likely. It's simply one more intermediatery between your client, you, NI and the cloud service, that can add a critical error source.

No. Those were built exactly to customer spec and do exactly what they promise to do. The fact that they’re a horrible idea doesn’t make them left-hand scissors. There isn’t a better design for shared variables that would make them safer or more practical. Shared variables are more like the 1950s kids’ science kits that shipped with pieces of actual uranium to play with.