Growth in demand for secure data storage combined with negative US and EU privacy laws see Swiss data industry experience boom.
Swiss offshore hosting company Artmotion reported that the demand for “ultra secure hosting” in the country is reaching an all-time-high as a result of EU and US laws that inhibit the privacy of company records and data.
In the US, government departments, law enforcement and intelligence agencies can access “medical and financial records, business secrets and dealings”, whilst in the EU, despite data protection legislation, “large corporations hold reservations about the effectiveness of these policies”, with the result, according to Artmotion, that “global organisations are flocking” to Switzerland in order to “take advantage of the country’s famous culture of privacy”.
The nation offers myriad benefits to companies looking for data security, including “not being a member of the EU” and thus not being subject to EU laws, meaning “the only way to gain access” to data hosted in Switzerland is if a company “receives an official court order proving guilt of liability”.
This privacy in terms of data and information is more important to many companies, as the possibility of government agencies trying to gain access to all data in the name of national security is an issue that has continuously reappeared in both the US and the UK, with the former’s Patriot Act allowing access to private information under anti-terrorism legislation.
Artmotion’s Director Mateo Meier stated: “Switzerland’s reputation for neutrality, privacy and independence and our advantageous tax system has always attracted some of the world’s biggest corporations. Once it was banking and now they want to host their data in our country.
“Recent attacks on privacy by the US and EU have played into our hands and now a country once renown for private banking is attracting big businesses who want to maximise their data security.”
Data security is a theme that has recurred recently for companies in the imaging industry, with HP suffering the fallout from a security flaw in its printer firmware, whilst SMBs have been found to be more at risk from such printer weaknesses, which include harnessing code to cause a device to potentially catch fire.