Why should you care how Europe protects its cloud computing data? If you live in Europe then the answer is obvious. If you don't live in Europe the answer should still concern you for a few reasons.
Where Europe Goes So Goes the Rest of the World
In a world where nations are increasingly concerned about data privacy and security, especially due to the seemingly ongoing revelations by Edward Snowden about NSA spying, it is a matter of time before nations begin to develop standards (even laws) about how their data should be handled.
Europe, perhaps, has more reasons than other countries to develop cloud standards for the protection of European data. In fact, there is reason to believe that Europe may be far down the path towards developing a framework for cloud privacy and security; something few countries have successfully completed, even the United States.
Data Tends to be Nationalistic
Data is intellectual property. Nations tend to protect their valuable industries. This will never change. Data, therefore, despite the cloud and its ability to spread data all over the world, should be protected by nations and should offer users the ability to determine where their data is and who is accessing it. Data protection is a legitimate function of any government and Europe is interested in seeing these philosophies become a reality.
Key European Cloud Issues
Europe needs to focus on the following key issues prior to developing any cloud computing standard related to data privacy and security
- Define the types of data. Not all data is created equal. Some European data may be perfectly acceptable residing on the public cloud. Confidential data, however, may deserve more special treatment.
- Data residency. Where is confidential data residing? Cloud computing means elasticity, scalability, and often implies large public cloud infrastructure, which is not always visible or transparent. Knowing where confidential data resides will be an important first step towards protecting it.
- Data access. Once you know where the data is, you also need to know who has access and what they are doing with it. Other countries, like the United States, have already created similar standards related to outsourcing of bank data and infrastructure. Europe should follow this trend and demand more visibility into cloud access policies and procedures.
