Robert Lemos| Eweek
A survey of the security and data-privacy policies for cloud computing found that Singapore, Canada and Russia made the greatest leaps forward for secure, open policy environments. Nations around the world have made spotty progress on national policies to support cloud computing and digital commerce, with a few standouts, such as Singapore, passing solid privacy and security regulations, according to a survey of 24 countries by the Business Software Alliance.
In the “2013 BSA Global Cloud Computing Scorecard,” Asian nations ran the gamut of marks for policy. Japan topped the list of nations with comprehensive laws supporting cloud computing and digital commerce, while Vietnam brought up the bottom due to a lack of regulations. Australia and the United States claimed the No. 2 and No. 3 spots, respectively, while Singapore’s strong privacy and security regulations helped it vault to fifth place from number 10 last year. “We see some really patchy progress around the world,” said Chris Hopfensperger, technology policy counsel for the BSA. “Countries like Singapore have embraced a future of wanting to be a digital hub, [while] in Europe, we have seen real stalling across the board.” The survey measures how friendly nations’ policies are to cloud computing and digital commerce, taking into account factors such as whether there are laws dealing with privacy, security, cyber-crime and intellectual property. Because the Business Software Alliance has historically been most interested in protecting its members’ software from piracy, the report gives appropriate intellectual property regulations the most weight among those four issues. The largest factor, however, was the readiness of a country’s infrastructure to handle digital commerce.
