Financial firms that want to move workloads to the cloud can take guidance from a paper by Microsoft: "Enabling Compliance: Microsoft's approach to the FCA's finalised Cloud guidance."
The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) released guidance in July aimed at supporting firms from the financial services sector as they move workloads to the cloud – from deciding to outsource and selecting a provider, to monitoring how their data is handled.
With this new paper, Microsoft aims to encourage clients in the legal and compliance community to use Microsoft cloud services.
With this initiative, Microsoft aim to provide better guiding to their customers by making cloud services deployment easier to carry out and understand. The UK's top regulator foresees to use this service to prevent any relevant risks, and provide information aimed to solve any doubt that customers could have over the deployment process.
As Brad Smith, Microsoft President and Chief Legal Officer, stated in an open letter: "We understand that it is our responsibility to provide tools and information that will enable you to deploy cloud services with the highest confidence that they are safe and compliant."
The Enabling Compliance guide also states: "Your customer data will always be isolated and subject to a standard of protection which is no lower than that required by EU data protection authorities wherever it is stored throughout the world."
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