Companies are under threat of financial loss due to defective data centers.

According to investigations conducted by the Aberdeen Group consulting firm, data center outages cost companies and service providers an average of USD 1.5 million per year. In view of the cloud computing boom, it is thus easy to imagine the threat of the gigantic financial losses that companies are facing due to the defective quality of data centers. There is no question that cloud computing requires secure data centers.

Companies can acquire the corresponding protection through contractual provisions regarding liability, data security and data availability – although this is meaningless if a data center operator becomes bankrupt, for example, as Cologne-based attorney and IT expert Christian Solmecke explains. “In this case, the company theoretically has a right to withdraw its data. However, once the cloud has been switched off, the legal process to assert this right can take years – especially if the data are located in the USA,” says the legal expert.

Correspondingly, it is particularly important for operators with large or sensitive data volumes to be painstakingly meticulous when selecting their cloud partner for reasons of data security. In many cases, European data security laws have an entirely different level of protection than those in the USA, for example. Companies can try to protect themselves contractually, but this will be more difficult with a non-European company due to the different data security levels. Solmecke concludes: “In order to use cloud services in a manner that complies with the data protection provisions of the Federal Data Protection Act, commissioned data processing within an EC/EEA cloud is the medium of choice.”