Dive Brief:
- The new EU-U.S. Privacy Shield will not impact AWS customers, explained Steve Schmidt, AWS Chief Information Security Officer, in a company blog post.
- Schmidt said AWS customers aren’t affected because they choose where they store their data and they have full control of the movement of their data.
- Additionally, customers that transfer personal data from an AWS region in the EU to the U.S. can do so under the terms of the AWS Data Processing Addendum with Model Clauses, approved in 2015 by the EU data protection authorities.
Dive Insight:
Tech giants like AWS are more prepared for the shift to Privacy Shield because they use different legal arrangements like model clauses to set privacy standards between the sender and receiver of the data. Schmidt's post also adds clarity for companies that use a cloud service provider for data storage. With full control over the movement of data and the choice of the region where the data is stored, AWS customers remain largely unaffected.
Amazon said it is also working to complete the EU-U.S. Privacy Shield self-certification process as an additional layer of protection.
Earlier this week, both Microsoft and Workday announced there were among the first businesses to sign up for the new Privacy Shield regulations. The Commerce Department's International Trade Administration began accepting self-certify applications on August 1. About 4,400 companies operated under the previous data transfer pact, so more self-certifications are expected to trickle in.
The Privacy Shield, the new rules for transferring European Union citizens' personal information to the U.S., was officially adopted by EU and U.S. officials on July 12.
