The NSA scandal has made UK and Canadian businesses wary of storing data in the U.S. About 25 percent of them will move their company data outside of the U.S. due to NSA-related privacy and security concerns, according to an independent survey of 300 UK and Canadian businesses, commissioned by web infrastructure and cloud hosting provider PEER 1 Hosting.
Canadian companies are even more likely to relocate data than UK companies, with one in three saying they will move away from U.S. datacenters. Despite this trend, the U.S. remains the most popular place for these companies to host data outside of their home countries (51 percent).
The survey also revealed that the top three concerns for UK and Canadian businesses when choosing a (cloud) hosting provider are now security (96 percent), performance (94 percent) and reputation (87 percent). Nearly 70 percent of respondents agree they would sacrifice performance to ensure data sovereignty.
Struggling with data laws
Despite these attitudes, organizations admit they are struggling to fully understand current data laws, with 60 percent agreeing they don’t know as much as they should about data security laws. Additionally, 44 percent feel that privacy and security laws confuse them.
“Many are moving data outside of the U.S., and even more are making security and privacy their top concerns when choosing where to host their company data,” said Robert Miggins, SVP business development, PEER 1 Hosting. “It’s clear that hosting and cloud providers need to take note and offer their customers true choice in terms of the locations and environments where they store their data, ensuring they can maintain security, compliance and privacy to the best extent possible.”
PEER 1 has cloud hosting, managed hosting, and dedicated hosting options at more than 16 datacenter locations across North America and Europe. Clients would have full visibility of their data in PEER 1’s hosting infrastructure, and can choose to host data in the locations that best meet their data security and privacy requirements.
