Thursday 10 May 2012

Issues in regards of Cloud Computing: Jurisdictional



Cloud computing is considered by many to be a lower cost, efficient, easily accessible solution to data storage and retrieval. Storing your data in the “cloud” offers the promise of access irrespective of the location from which you are accessing it. Such universal accessibility is understandably appealing to both businesses and consumers equally.

In other words, cloud computing act  as a means of ensuring that your information is available to you anywhere you have internet access. The fundamental premise upon which cloud computing is based is that it does not matter where data is stored but what matters is that the data can be accessed anywhere. From a legal perspective, however, the distributed nature of cloud computing creates jurisdictional uncertainty, because with information being stored and available “anywhere”, who has jurisdiction over it? Whose laws apply?

Hence we will continue to discuss how jurisdictional aspects becomes an issue in cloud computing. First of all, data that might be secure in one country may not be secure in another. In many cases, users of cloud services don't know where their information is stored. Currently in the process of trying to synchronize the data laws of its member states, the EU favors very strict protection of privacy, while in America laws such as the US Patriot Act invest government and other agencies with virtually limitless powers to access informations.

In Malaysia, around the year 2009, MIMOS ( Malaysian Institute Of Microelectronic Systems) took the first step toward public  sector cloud computing by joining the open source cloud computing test bed called Open Cirrus, created by HP, Intel, and Yahoo. This was aimed at learning from the global adoption of the delivery model and establishing a platform for the same in the country. Additionally, MYEG and the National Archives database use certain elements of the private cloud platform. However, there is significant room for the expansion of cloud services in the country. Not only that, the Malaysian Government has identified cloud computing as a major focus area and had kept cloud computing as the foremost strategic technology for 2010 under the MSC Malaysia program. The Malaysian Information System Officer Association expects cloud computing to lead to increased transparency and reduced ICT expenditure by up to 50 percent, while improving efficiencies.


The territorial borders for determining jurisdiction of courts in Malaysia can be seen from order 11 of the Rules of High Court 1980 and section 23 of the Court of Judicature Act 1964.Unfortunately, because cloud computing means ensuring your information is everywhere and anywhere, jurisdictional uncertainty issue will definitely arise.

However, the lack of clarity over jurisdiction issues due to free flow of data across state and national borders, complicate the decision to move into the cloud, especially for the public sector.  In order to overcome these issues, governments in the region need to put in place plans to improve local internet infrastructure, promote entry of local participants in the market and bring in standardization. 
Unlike the United States and European Union (EU) which are largely homogenous regions from a jurisdiction standpoint, Asia Pacific is an extremely heterogeneous region. In the absence of international cloud computing legal and governance frameworks, cross-border data interchange will be nearly impossible in the government sector. Data centers hosting the cloud infrastructure have to be largely local and preferably closer to the Federal agencies. 

As a whole, we can say that although the internet is global, but laws and regulations governing ICT Companies are often national. Human rights risks also may vary according to which country personal information is stored in, and how a company’s network is structured. Hence, it is important for policy makers to strike the right regulatory balance in ensuring flexibility, regulatory compliance and jurisdiction issues. The right balance between these three components will allow cloud computing to perform in an efficient manner. 

Disclaimer: This blog information is for the purpose of academic as we are learning Cyber Law. If there is any dissatisfaction of the information contain in this blog, please comment in this blog and we will retract back the information.  Thank you for your cooperation.

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