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Microsoft said on Thursday that it will keep all personal data of its cloud customers within the European Union instead of allowing transfers outside the EU. This is part of their ongoing efforts to comply with different privacy regulations in different places.
Microsoft will store customer data from its cloud services within the “EU data boundary” under the new policy. This includes Azure, Microsoft 365, Power Platform, and Dynamics 365.
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This includes “pseudonymized personal data,” which is found in system-generated logs and has been altered so as not to be directly linked to an individual — “making Microsoft the first large-scale cloud provider to deliver this level of data residency to European customers,” the company said in a release.
Microsoft announced in December 2022 that it will start localizing data storage soon. The first phase was completed last year and focused on storing personal data within the EU, excluding system-generated logs.
Recently, Microsoft and other big tech companies are under scrutiny from regulators over data transfers from the European Union, which has strict privacy laws under the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). In May 2023, Meta was fined $1.3 billion by the Irish Data Protection Commission for transferring data to the United States, where there are concerns about limited protections and sensitive information possibly ending up in the hands of law enforcement.
In July 2023, the EU and U.S. agreed on a new “Data Privacy Framework” allowing data transfers with protections. However, Microsoft is pursuing its EU Boundary plan, and Amazon plans to launch a “European Sovereign Cloud” service to keep customers’ metadata within the bloc.
