The House of Parliament is heavily dependent on Microsoft
The importance of data sovereignty in the cloud services environment was highlighted by Joan Miller, head of Parliamentary ICT at the UK Houses of Parliament (HoP), during a presentation at the Cloud World Forum in London this week.
Miller said that the HoP is heavily dependent on Microsoft and is in the process of migrating to Office 365, a move that will result in much of the organisation’s data being stored outside of the UK. She said that EU regulation would ensure the security of HoP data, stressing that “we need to know where it sits” in order to ensure that HoP does not fall foul of disparities in international cloud regulation.
An audience member from the banking community pointed out that the US Patriot Act is open to interpretation, for example, adding that his employers took it to mean that any US company hosting data could be compelled to grant access to that data, irrespective of its physical location.
Miller conceded that “there is no precedent” within the HoP that offers guidance on this issue, but said the HoP stance on the Act is that data kept within the EU was safe. She said that she would be seeking a contractual agreement from Microsoft that such data would be free from external interference.
Much HoP data is designed for public consumption anyway and is therefore not a security issue once published, she said. For Miller security is focused more around the timing of information being published, as data that will be in the public domain must be kept private during the process of creation and redrafting. Source data must also be well protected.
Email and MS Office data clearly needs protection and some data will always have to stay within the Parliamentary Estate, she said.
