Olga Magomedova took part in the conference “Cloud and Platform Services: IaaS, DBaaS, DRaaS, Kubernetes, SecaaS”

During the presentation, the expert noted that at the moment cloud providers are subject to the legal requirements on personal data on a formal basis: since they provide computing power for data storage, it means that they process it, and therefore, according to the meaning of the legislation on personal data, they are considered to be data controllers and should bear the corresponding responsibilities. Although in practice, in accordance with the contract on cloud services, the cloud provider does not have access to the user's data. Therefore, with the development of data turnover, cloud providers need to ensure that they can utilize the economic potential of data access in cloud services.

The expert also highlighted a new legal institution in EU law: data altruism. In accordance with the terms of the new mechanism, individuals can voluntarily share their personal data for multiple use by an unlimited number of individuals for the benefit of society, such as research and development of innovations. Entities that collect such data in the public interest are registered as “data altruism organizations.” While cloud providers are considered commercially interested parties, they cannot engage in data-altruism professionally but can be donors of data generated during their own professional activities, including personal data, if it is obtained using a special form.

Thus, although cloud providers are not directly involved in data processing, they can contribute greatly to the availability of data on the national market by utilizing new legal tools.