BSA & Galexia Global Coud Computing Scorecard (2018) - Galexia Analytics Release

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4. BSA Cloud Policy Blueprint

The economic growth predicted to flow from cloud computing — and the resulting transformation of both businesses and national economies — is predicated on the proper policies being in place in each of the seven areas used in the BSA Cloud Scorecard:

• Ensuring data privacy: The success of cloud computing depends on users’ faith that their information will not be used or disclosed in unexpected ways. At the same time, to maximize the benefit of the cloud, providers must be free to move data through the cloud in the most efficient way.
• Promoting security: Users must be assured that cloud computing providers understand and properly manage the risks inherent in storing and running applications in the cloud. Cloud providers must be able to implement cutting-edge cybersecurity solutions without being required to use specific technologies.
• Battling cybercrime: In cyberspace, as in the real world, laws must provide meaningful deterrence and clear causes of action. Legal systems should provide an effective mechanism for law enforcement, and for cloud providers themselves, to combat unauthorized access to data stored in the cloud.
• Protecting intellectual property: In order to promote continued innovation and technological advancement, intellectual property laws should provide for clear protection and vigorous enforcement against misappropriation and infringement of the developments that underlie the cloud.
• Ensuring data portability and the harmonization of international rules: The smooth flow of data around the world — for example, between different cloud providers — requires efforts to promote openness and interoperability. Governments should work with industry to develop standards, while also working to minimize conflicting legal obligations on cloud providers.
• Promoting free trade: By their very nature, cloud technologies operate across national boundaries. The cloud’s ability to promote economic growth depends on a global market that transcends barriers to free trade, including preferences for particular products or providers.
• Establishing the necessary IT infrastructure: Cloud computing requires robust, ubiquitous, and affordable broadband access. This can be achieved through policies that provide incentives for private sector investment in broadband infrastructure and laws that promote universal access to broadband.

The move to the cloud and capitalization on its benefits across the board is hardly inevitable, and an urgent task lies ahead for governments. In order to obtain the benefits of the cloud, policymakers must provide a legal and regulatory framework that will promote innovation, provide incentives to build the infrastructure to support it, and promote confidence that using the cloud will bring the anticipated benefits without sacrificing expectations of privacy, security, and safety

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