Business
Information technology
Safe in the cloud?
Luxembourg financial firms have been missing out on the cloud computing craze because of the Grand Duchy’s strict data regulations. Might that be changing? Text: Aaron Grunwald — Photo: Olivier Minaire
Cloud computing provides huge cost and time advantages over traditional IT, but Luxembourg lags in its adaption rate, experts say. One main reason is the Grand Duchy’s strict data protection laws, which require financial institutions to keep all electronic information physically inside Luxembourg’s borders. Yet the industry is cautiously moving towards the cloud, as workable solutions become available. An Ernst & Young survey last year found that 79 percent of Luxembourg respondents--about half of whom were in financial services--“are not planning to move towards cloud computing,” reports Piet-Hein Prince, senior manager of IT risk and assurance at the firm’s Luxembourg office. “That is almost a mirror image of the rest of the world.” According to his colleague, Maxime Briere, 100 percent of Luxembourg companies cited “data leakage” as the main risk. “Surprisingly zero percent of Luxembourg respondents found performance management a risk.” At the same time, 75 percent of Luxembourg firms said they would consider using cloud solutions if providers were officially certified. Clear benefits The attraction comes down to simple economics. “Rolling out a server in your own environment might take you a couple days to a couple of weeks,” says Patrick Dalvinck, Benelux region director at Trend Micro. Just as an individual user could use Google’s email service, “If you go to a cloud, with a couple clicks of a mouse,
Patrick Dalvinck: hopes cloud-based security strikes the right chord with Luxembourg’s financial institutions
all of a sudden you’ve got your additional infrastructure up and running.” At Luxembourg’s financial institutions today, “the closer you get to core data, the more hesitant they are to put it in the cloud,” explains Bernard Moreau, CEO at Lab Group, a storage vendor certified by Luxembourg’s financial regulator. “Some of them do use the cloud for particular purposes. The main goal is not to move all applications, but just some specific applications,” such as marketing or website content, “where they can distinguish between critical and non-critical data.” However, he says, “There’s no black and white [rule], you just have to find the balance” that works for each firm.
Dalvinck reckons there are security advantages to be found in the cloud. Instead of putting performance-sapping programmes directly on a server or a PC, Trend Micro can checks internet traffic against a more powerful cloud-based system, and verify the physical location of servers that access data. He says his company is currently negotiating a deal to implement this new technology with one of Luxembourg’s largest banks. As for the risk of breaching the Grand Duchy’s specific regulations, Moreau admits “with cloud computing you could access the data from anywhere in the world. But it’s not because you can that you do.”
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05.05.2011 16:48:39 Uhr