16 Dec Data Flows and Building Trust in the Cloud
By enabling data analytics, machine learning and artificial intelligence, the cloud helps organisations reduce costs, solve difficult problems, and deliver new services. That’s why it’s so important to be building trust in the Cloud across Europe.
The use of cloud technologies enables Small and Medium sized Enterprises (SMEs) to compete on a global scale. However, the ability of SMEs fully to realise the benefits of the cloud is sometimes impeded by laws covering data protection, storage, and localisation of services. These laws should be scrutinised to ensure that they enhance, rather than inhibit, SMEs’ ability to compete, innovate and grow.
Such efforts must include consideration of three concurrent imperatives. The first is a recognition that the ability to transfer data and digital information is essential to economic growth and opportunity. The second is the need to ensure that the flow of data is compatible with people’s rights over their personal information. The third is the need to ensure that governments have proper procedures in place to access data when necessary to protect public safety.
Ongoing debates concerning access to data by law enforcement agencies highlight the need for all stakeholders to come together and take part in discussions that will lead to modernised legal frameworks.
Trust, built upon agreed principles of lawful access, is essential for widespread cloud adoption. On the one hand, organisations should be transparent about how they collect, store, use and share personal data. On the other, clear privacy frameworks – which provide strong privacy protections but do not prevent the benefits of cloud computing that arise from the use of data – are needed.