Dive Brief:

• Microsoft announced Monday that it will sign up for the Privacy Shield between the European Union and the United States, making it the first major U.S. tech company to do so.
• The Privacy Shield is a new transatlantic commercial data pact agreed on by Brussels and Washington in February.
• The pact replaces Safe Harbour, the former agreement that allowed firms to move personal data across the Atlantic in compliance with strict EU data transfer rules.

Dive Insight:

Microsoft said it will sign the new data pact and will work with European privacy regulators to resolve any potential disputes.

Some privacy experts remain concerned that the new agreement does not sufficiently address concerns over U.S. surveillance programs. But Microsoft's decision to endorse the deal could influence some of the 4,400 other companies that operated under the previous agreement to follow suit. 

"At Microsoft we believe that privacy is a fundamental human right," said John Frank, Microsoft's Vice President of EU Government Affairs, in the company's announcement. "In a time when business and communications increasingly depend on the transmission of personal data across borders, no one should give up their privacy rights simply because their information is stored in electronic form or their technology service provider transfers it to another country."

The 15-year-old Safe Harbour agreement, under which businesses transferred personal information of EU citizens to the U.S. for storage and processing, was ruled invalid by the EU last October. While a new agreement was negotiated, American tech companies were held in limbo, uncertain whether they could continue their data transfer practices, which potentially put their businesses at risk. 

On Tuesday, EU data protection regulators will hold a two-day meeting, deciding whether to endorse the deal themselves.

Other tech companies have been making moves to prepare for the Privacy Shield. In February, Google announced it would clean search results across all its websites in European countries when accessed from a European country. The data scrub is the outcome of a battle with the EU data protection authorities over the "right to be forgotten." In 2014, the EU Court of Justice mandated that people could ask for search engines to remove irrelevant information that appears under a person's name.