“Clients are proactively asking the question around data residency”
Craig Bird, CEO, CloudTech24
There’s been growing scrutiny over the dependency of UK business on US tech infrastructure. Is this something your clients are talking about, and do you expect any to change course in light of recent events?
We are increasingly hearing from clients about the importance of data sovereignty, particularly among those with distributed and global operations.
Many are now proactively asking the question around data residency and asking to keep data within the EU.
Previously, clients were generally less concerned with the location of vendors and often accepted (or incorrectly assumed) that US tech companies meant that their data resided in the US.
Before working with a new supplier or vendor we perform the due diligence required as part of our ISO 27001 requirements, and where possible we ensure that we host our infrastructure and cloud services within the UK or EU to support resilience and reduce exposure to US data access.
What’s your advice as an independent trusted advisor?
Our advice is to unless specifically required to use US data infrastructure, place data within UK/EU data centres/zones/regions. Most cloud providers offer different regions to place data and customers should always ask where data is stored, and if there is option to store it within a more suitable region.
Customers should also consider resiliency, and if possible have any data assets split across multiple regions so if one region encounters downtime for whatever reason, the business continuity can be maintained. We work with over 250 businesses providing ongoing managed services. These companies trust us to have solutions in place that align to their internal requirements and working with a more mature provider is often a much simpler solution than building services inhouse, especially when considering data sovereignty.
