Data Sovereignty and Cloud Computing
Here at theCloud we take data very seriously and something that keeps coming up are questions such as "where is my data?". So it's important to note that all services on theCloud preserve the data sovereignty requirements of New Zealand law, meaning all data is kept right here in New Zealand and we never send your data outside of New Zealand, ever!The infrastructure behind theCloud is located in several datacentres throughout New Zealand and customers have the option to operate cloud servers in one or more location, providing true geographical redundancy for any services setup in that way. As for our own core services such as Exchange Email and Online Storage; we already replicate that data between geographic locations!
The Inland Revenue Department in New Zealand released an alert, named RE 10/02 on December 12th 2010 relating to the use of Cloud Computing and storage of business data.
To extract the relevant section, the alert warns New Zealand businesses that;
...basically this means anyone using a cloud based accounting solution or storage of business financial data in an online storage location outside of New Zealand is technically in breach of IRD regulations.It is the Commissioner's view that only business records stored in data centres physically located in New Zealand will comply with the record keeping obligations in the Inland Revenue Acts. Taxpayers are responsible for ensuring they comply with their record keeping obligations. Therefore, taxpayers using a cloud computing service will need to be satisfied that all their business records will be stored in data centres located in New Zealand
If you have any questions regarding the security, location, backup, restore, local access or other, of data stored on theCloud, please get in touch and we only too happy to provide answers and assist with any requirements you may have.