But with appropriate legal frameworks like traffic laws, with training and practice required for obtaining a licence to drive, and with regular inspection, maintenance and control, they become significantly safer.

And then, of course, it depends on what you are using a car for: as a family transportation device in a city or as a Formula 1 racecar. One of those use cases requires much less attention, the other far more.

The same applies to the cloud. You need a clear legal framework, like the GDPR and other Internet-specific regulations. You need rules, proper training, practice, and regular maintenance and inspection. Then it becomes safer.

And like with cars, it depends on what you are using the cloud for: to store your family photos, manage your company’s finances or control the airspace over Europe? Some use cases require less caution, others very much more.

What can be done to improve safety in the cloud?

As always, the best safety measure is knowledge—about the technology, the processes and the mechanisms. You need to understand the laws and be able to read contracts. Don’t accept everything at face value; be critical. It often turns out that much of what is being offered is hot air. And you should demand complete transparency from your provider, something many providers are still a long way away from. But these days there are also many excellent examples of companies offering top-notch services that are much more secure than anything one could operate at one’s own company. If you want to check the quality of cloud services, I can only recommend consulting the staraudit.org website.

Credits: chagpg, Fotolia_218554466_L

Dr. Tobias Höllwarth is President of EuroCloud Europe eurocloud.org, Director of the StarAudit Programme staraudit.org, and heads a European network of IT lawyers: cloudprivacycheck.eu/who/.