In a number of countries, we see government agencies seeking broad access to private, personally identifiable information (PII). The increased use of public cloud solutions makes it more difficult for organizations to protect the data entrusted to them by their users while also respecting all relevant laws. The European Union has some of the most progressive privacy laws, and all the major cloud providers—Amazon, Google and Microsoft—offer multiple data centers and regions within the European Union. Therefore, we recommend that companies, especially those with a global user base, assess the feasibility of a safe haven for their users' data by hosting PII data in the EU. Since we wrote about this technique in the last Radar, we have rolled out a new internal system that handles sensitive information relating to all our employees, and we have chosen to host it in a data center located in the European Union.
In a number of countries, we see government agencies seeking broad access to private, personally identifiable information (PII). The increased use of public cloud solutions makes it more difficult for organizations to protect the data entrusted to them by their users while also respecting all relevant laws. The European Union has some of the most progressive privacy laws, and all the major cloud providers—Amazon, Google and Microsoft—offer multiple data centers and regions within the European Union. Therefore, we recommend that companies, especially those with a global user base, assess the feasibility of a safe haven for their users' data by hosting PII data in the EU. Since we wrote about this technique in the last Radar, we have rolled out a new internal system that handles sensitive information relating to all our employees, and we have chosen to host it in a data center located in the European Union.
In a number of countries around the world, we see government agencies seeking broad access to private, personally identifiable information (PII). In the EU, the highest court has invalidated the Safe Harbor framework, and Privacy Shield, its successor, is expected to be challenged too. At the same time, the use of cloud computing is increasing, and all the major cloud providers—Amazon, Google and Microsoft—offer multiple data centers and regions within the European Union. Therefore, we recommend that companies, especially those with a global user base, assess the feasibility of a safe haven for their users' data, protected by the most progressive privacy laws, by Hosting PII in the EU.
