EU regulators say cloud computing leaves banks exposed to risks

European Union watchdogs have released a report last Wednesday (April.10th) in which they state that the finance industry relies too much on third parties and that their concerns are “especially acute with regard to cloud services”.

According to top European financial regulators, the financial industry’s dependence on just a few large cloud computing companies to store key data is an emerging threat to stability and requires new legislation to guard against potential vulnerabilities.

In a market dominated by cloud computing providers Amazon.com Inc., Microsoft Corp and Alphabet Inc.’s Google, the majority of European financial firms should be wary of putting all their eggs in one basket.

Businesses are moving data away from their own servers and storage centres, and into third-party cloud services which, the Financial Stability Board said back in February, “could quickly upend the banking industry, introducing new risks into the financial system”.