The UK Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) recently published a useful and informative report on cloud computing that provides key guidance for companies using or considering cloud services in the UK. The guidelines intend to help organizations comply with the 1998 Data Protection Act (DPA), and they offer welcome assistance for private and public enterprises struggling to avoid stiff non-compliance penalties from the watchdog agency.
The ICO emphasizes that cloud customers are responsible for ensuring data protection, whether they know it or not. Many businesses simply don’t realize that data protection is their responsibility when processing is outsourced to a third party (i.e., a cloud provider).