UK government seeks to regulate data centres – onerous requirements for data centre and cloud operators

UK government seeks to regulate data centres – onerous requirements for data centre and cloud operators

The Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport (DCMS) has published a consultation on new measures to boost the security of data centres in the United Kingdom. The UK government is requesting input on whether measures that have been mandated for other sectors should also be used for data centre and cloud platform infrastructure.

Cloud and data centre operators will need to have continuity assurances, risk and security as well as incident management plans in place. In the event of an incident, operators are required to notify the authorities and coordinate with the government on a recovery response. In addition, security and resilience must be dealt with at board level. Operators must allow the authorities to test their security systems and give them access to data if it is required for an investigation.

The consultation is a part of a wider policy development in the UK on increasing the security and resilience of data infrastructure, which the Government deems to be critical for the functioning of the country’s economy. Responses may be submitted until the 24th of July, after which DCMS will summarise responses and consider potential policy recommendations and legislative action.

For more information, please contact [email protected].

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