Cloud is now 'critical national infrastructure', according to expert panel

The cloud is now so ubiquitous for business that it must be protected and regulated

Cloud data centres should be treated as critical national infrastructure, with governance and regulation to protect them, a panel agreed at Computing's Cloud and Infrastructure Summit North.

It is a risk to put so much business into the data centres of a small number of providers, said former House of Fraser CIO Julian Burnett, but he argued that that itself makes the case for higher levels of regulation:

"It becomes critical national infrastructure by definition, in the same way that water, power, gas, road networks and transport networks are. It needs to be classified in that regard and those organisations offering those services...need to be governed to that level."

He painted a picture of the risks that we could face if a major cloud provider disappeared overnight: "If Sainsbury's, Tescos, Asda and Morrisons all went, you wouldn't be eating. There are potential material implications for the nation if you can't eat - it all rots in the ground, because they're in demand-based supply chains.

Fellow panellist John Lyons - Head of Cloud & Hosting at Zen - said, "We've had this problem for a long time; if you take, say, Docklands - if you were to wipe it out we'd lose the ability to take money out of ATMs. That would be a big problem. Cloud's no different; this has been a national risk for as long as I've been in the service provider industry, for the last 20 years. In any market with hugely dominant players, you have to rely on good regulation or they will get out of control."

Both Burnett and Lyons said that the GDPR is a good starting point for this regulation, but it serves the customer interest: there must be regulation for the enterprise interest, too.

David Roberts (CIO at Radius Payment Solutions) recommended building the possibility of a cloud collapse into business continuity plans, although he questioned the likelihood of such a situation. "Are they really going to lose London, Vienna and wherever they may be all at the same time?"

Michael Maibaum of Sky Betting & Gaming said that he is more comfortable with these major providers running a data centres than he is - and they've got more of them. Lyons agreed, closing the topic by pointing out, "There's a higher concentration of risk, but I think that risk is lower."