Facebook might pull out of the EU
Cloud storage. We don’t think about it much. We just access it. All we care about is it stays up and working, and we can access our data from anywhere. The problem that many of us don’t think about is privacy based on location. Data privacy laws are changing faster than ever before. These changes are causing quite the rift in how and where data is stored. Just take a look at Facebook. While I doubt it will happen, Facebook is threatening to pull out of the EU because of the new data laws that might be implemented by the Irish Data protection commission where the commission says data cannot be shared between the US and Europe because they can’t confirm if the US intelligence agencies are snooping on the data.
What’s next for data privacy and security?
Data protection should be taken seriously. Countries and states are starting to take some pioneering steps to do just that. The problem is the varied approach at determining how we should protect this asset that is worth more than oil. I think this varied approach will end up hurting the way data moves through our global infrastructure. The more fractured governments, states and companies work with how to control and protect data will make some of those same companies try to determine if it’s cost effective for them to still serve that country or industry.
Even in my line of work, compliance with these laws get overwhelming as a small business, and compliance programs can be cost prohibitive. I would bet that as countries make laws to counter the sharing of data and data breaches happening more frequently, small businesses will try to distance themselves from holding data to remove their liability. In turn, this will exacerbate the issue we currently have with large companies managing and holding all the data as they will be the only ones that will be able to comply with the law and manage the data in a way that can counter most cybersecurity threats.
We can see this happening now, as small business rely on Google, Amazon, and Microsoft to store their data. Because it is now stored on their systems I would almost guarantee that they will still end up being able to gather some metadata, even if they claim they don’t access the data itself. Even if they don’t sell that data, they will get to determine what countries they serve and at what price to charge to serve the countries if they determine it to be more cost prohibitive to serve due to data privacy laws. There’s a lot more that could be said, but to be succinct, we must find a better way to handle and store data that doesn’t rely on large corporations to manage our data, or the same thing we are trying to avoid will happen.
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