US lobbyists pay for report critical of EU cloud regulation • The Register

A proposed EU Cloud Certification Scheme has met with additional criticism from a European coverage assume tank, though it seems its report was commissioned by a Washington-based IT trade foyer group.

The European Cybersecurity Certification Scheme for Cloud Companies (EUCS) is meant to place in place an EU-wide certification framework for IT companies.

Nonetheless, the proposals would additionally impose “sovereignty” necessities that pressure cloud suppliers to host companies for EU prospects on infrastructure sited throughout the EU, and to display their “immunity” from international regulation enforcement authorities demanding entry to information.

The proposals have already met with opposition from the US, with plenty of trade associations issuing a press release in December claiming that such guidelines would hamper huge US cloud suppliers reminiscent of Amazon, Google, and Microsoft from doing enterprise in Europe.

Now a report has been issued by the European Centre for Worldwide Political Financial system (ECIPE) criticizing the EUCS proposals. It requires the EU’s Cybersecurity Company (ENISA) and the European Fee to desert the immunity necessities in EUCS, warning that it might “open a Pandora’s field” by empowering the European Fee and particular person member states to exclude international companies from home cloud companies markets.

The report, “Building Resilience? The Cybersecurity, Economic & Trade Impacts of Cloud Immunity Requirements“, makes numerous claims concerning the proposed EU laws. For instance, that it might enhance the publicity of cloud adopters to cybersecurity dangers, that EU suppliers are “in no place to handle a broad-based transition to cloud,” and that the brand new guidelines would “delay vital effectivity and safety good points that present international suppliers might supply.”

However the report itself was commissioned by the Laptop & Communications Business Affiliation (CCIA), which is a world non-profit advocacy group based mostly in Washington DC to signify the pursuits of the IT and communications industries.

To be truthful to ECIPE, it claims to be an impartial and non-profit physique, and that the opinions provided are “purely these of the writer,” however readers can be amazed how usually such impartial reviews simply occur to align very intently with the views of the group that commissioned them.

For instance, it claims that the immunity necessities within the EUCS are “discriminatory by design” and will provoke retaliatory measures towards the EU by buying and selling companions (which means the US, in fact). This may take the type of retaliatory tariffs of 25 p.c on as much as $12 billion of EU items exports, based mostly on an assumption that an immunity provision would successfully ban companies from the three largest cloud suppliers value $2.9 billion, the report states. Alternatively, equal restrictions is perhaps utilized on EU companies exports to the US.

75% European cloud? You are joking

The report is maybe right when it states that European suppliers are at the moment in no place to handle the EU’s objective of 75 p.c cloud adoption charge for enterprises, and it is because US firms at the moment serve greater than 75 p.c of the EU market, with the large three cloud suppliers alone accounting for 72 percent, based on figures from Synergy Analysis Group final yr.

However European firms have themselves complained about anticompetitive practices from the large cloud suppliers, particularly Microsoft, which final yr offered concessions in a bid to appease regulators.

Microsoft has additionally been taking steps to supply better “information sovereignty” capabilities to EU customers, particularly the introduction of an EU “Data Boundary” at first of this yr, which supplied prospects with the power to retailer and course of their buyer information totally throughout the EU for sure cloud companies.

In the meantime, enterprise spending on cloud companies is growing, but at a reduced rate than in recent years, as organizations attempt to management prices amid rising inflation and a rising view by some that cloud investments might haven’t delivered on the promised outcomes. ®