Cloud Privacy Heat Map

I came across this post by James Staten and Onica King over at Forrester just now and thought it was interesting enough to re-post. Be sure to check out the interactive heat map that they reference – this really gives you an easy way to see which governments to worry about from a snooping perspective, which governments have some data restrictions, pending legislation in the works or the like. Good information!

Geographic location plays a significant role in establishing data protection obligations in the cloud. And while many cloud services originated within the US, growing demand, global competition, and practical business models drive vendor proliferation of cloud services hosted across diverse geographic locations.

<snip>

To help you grasp the varying scope of regulatory requirements at a high level, we’ve also created an interactive privacy heat map that denotes the degree of strictness — highlighting scope of protection, affected entities, ‘adequacy’ standards met, and heavily surveilled countries — across national data protection regulation.

Interactive Data Protection Heat Map

Remember, pay attention to where your data center will reside in the cloud. Country specific regulations governing privacy and data protection vary greatly, and can have an effect on data transfers, choice of security safeguards, and the rights of the data subjects.

Technorati Tags: cloud computing,privacy,identity management,Forrester,Onica King,James Staten