Privacy Shield and Managed File Transfer
For the last 4 years, transfers of European Union (EU) citizen personal data between the EU and United States (US) has been governed by a privacy law known as the EU – US Privacy Shield. This replaced the previous legislation known as the Safe Harbor Agreement.
In the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic, the European Court of Justice ripped up these privacy laws which safeguarded the movement of this data to 6000+ self-certified service providers in the US, unsurprisingly including the likes of Amazon, IBM, Microsoft and Google.
Largely this went un-noticed, but what it means is that in short, the special agreement the US had with the EU and the countries governed by the GDPR, is now shrouded in uncertainty and transferring information to a US data processor falls under the same category as it would transferring to a processor in North Korea.
Naturally this doesn’t mean we’re no longer permitted to move data between the EU and the US, instead it means alternative mechanisms known as Standard Contractual Clauses and Binding Corporate Rules are applied depending upon the transfer being internal or external to your organisation.
Furthermore, in its ruling the European Court of Justice placed the responsibility on organisations themselves to assess any target countries legislations to ensure that these alternative mechanisms remain effective.
This is not going to be a straightforward process, but Managed File Transfer (MFT) customers have ultimate jurisdiction over their own data flows. MFT empowers administrators by showing them the details of the endpoints they are connecting to, often being able to identify them as more than just an IP address.
Furthermore, the numbers of flows, endpoint, the steps involved are all identified using reporting tools in MFT, this is not available through third parties or S/PaaS type deployments to provide file transfer functionality.
With the Brexit withdrawal still set to take effect on the 1st January 2021, who knows what other politically driven data residency laws may come to being. Having control over your own data movements in the face of the large technology hyperscalers has never been more beneficial, no doubt making life easier for your IT, security, and compliance teams…
To find out how HANDD can help your organisation with MFT and privacy laws, contact the team of MFT experts on +44 (0)8456 434 063.
