CIOs, CSOs should address cloud sovereignty uncertainty with facts

Grazed from CSO. Author: David Braue.

IT and security leaders should arm themselves with details about the location of their corporate data and use a growing comfort with cloud computing to address policy concerns about data sovereignty, a recent Gartner analysis has recommended. The research firm’s The Snowden Effect: Data Location Matters report warned that knee-jerk reactions to questions about the physical location of corporate data were becoming increasingly difficult as a growing tide of organisations began to embrace offshore cloud services.

While tools such as encryption were in use to protect offshore data by 38 percent of 221 executives surveyed by Gartner, many organisations never got that far. With IT leaders often “entangled” in discussions on the issue with stakeholders and advisors from legal, customer, regulatory, management and other organisations, an overall fear of committing data to overseas cloud services had been reinforced by ambiguous guidance on the issue…

“Authorities’ guidance leaves room for interpretation, concerned stakeholders tend to discount emerging business value, and legal advisors don’t want the liability,” Gartner research vice president Carsten Casper, the author of the report, wrote…

Read more from the source @ http://www.cso.com.au/article/551018/cios_csos_should_address_cloud_sovereignty_uncertainty_facts_gartner/