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Impact

Make all stakeholders accountable for the use of data in the cloud

The Cloud Accountability Project aims to address the risks arising for individual cloud service users when their personal data are being proliferated in the cloud. New data protection regulations are imminent that will provide individual users of online services with greater protection. Such risks are also applicable for businesses, which make use of cloud services to process personal or proprietary data. The Cloud Accountability Project delivers the tools and mechanisms for users to hold service providers accountable on how data is used in the cloud. The lasting impact will be to fundamentally shift the balance of power in the relationship between providers and users of cloud services.

Realise the potentials

The adoption of the Cloud Accountability Project enables realising the potentials and benefits that are being brought to the involved stakeholders:

  • Reduced costs and risk of bringing data intensive services to market by making the process for respecting the data protection obligations simpler and less costly for businesses, especially entrepreneurs and SMEs
  • Enabling uptake of new value added services in the cloud by overcoming the barriers that make businesses holding back from using cloud services because of the uncertainty over the potential consequences
  • Better control over the use of data in the cloud enables new services, which make use of personal or confidential data
  • Novel accountability services support the start up of new business opportunities
 
A shift towards individuals being in control of their online presence
 
Data protection legislation addresses the need of individual end users as data subjects for privacy and protection online and creates obligations for service providers. Implementing accountability-based approaches for data use in the cloud puts the users in control of that data. The envisaged results will create a shift towards individual users actively exercising control over their digital presence in the cloud.
 
Independent initiative for accountability in cloud services
 
The Cloud Accountability Project will support evolving governance frameworks, including the revised EU Data Protection Directive. It will demonstrate and enhance compliance with data governance guidelines by means of contributing to those guidelines, providing a coherent framework for accountability that integrates legal, technical and governance approaches and by providing a range of codesigned mechanisms that can be used individually or in combination, including risk analysis, flexible contact management, transparency-enhancing tools, policy compliance and enforcement, security, assurance, liability clarification and redress. The participation of Cloud Security Alliance in the Consortium gives us an avenue to the Cloud Security world. But the project plans to penetrate more in the cloud security and leverage accountability as a principal concept for establishing security in Future Internet.