Amazon, Microsoft, Google, IBM, SAP, Salesforce/Slack, Atlassian, and Cisco have come together to form the Trusted Cloud Principles, claiming to be committed to safeguarding their customers’ rights.
The Trusted Cloud Principles’ aim is to protect organizations’ interests and individuals’ basic rights when they are using cloud services while allowing them to fulfill their goals safely and securely.
The Trusted Cloud Principles make it clear that IT behemoths want to work with governments worldwide to resolve international legal conflicts that suppress innovation, security, and privacy, as well as establish and enforce essential safeguards for businesses that collect and manage data in the cloud.
Some particular principles established by the signatories include:
- Governments should request data directly from corporate customers first, rather than cloud providers, unless in “extraordinary circumstances.”
- When governments request direct access to consumer data from cloud service providers, customers should have the right to be notified.
- To safeguard customers’ interests, cloud providers should have a precise mechanism for challenging government access demands for their data, which includes informing appropriate data protection authorities.
- Governments should develop methods to raise and resolve issues with one another so that cloud service providers’ legal compliance in one jurisdiction does not amount to a breach of law in another.
- Governments should encourage data flaws across borders.
At the same time, cloud service providers agree that the principles recognize that international human rights legislation enshrines a right to privacy, as well as the significance of customer trust, data ownership, and security.
The signatories also agreed to commit to relevant national and international legal frameworks.
The Trusted Cloud Principles were announced just days after Amazon Web Services, Microsoft, Google, IBM, and other big IT companies, as well as the EDM Council, a cross-industry trade group for data management and analytics, established a distinct data cloud framework.
