Resilience reforms will reach the cloud: What should businesses do next?

Regulated industries are in the spotlight. In September 2020, the European Union published plans for a new Digital Operational Resilience Act for financial services. And in the UK, the FCA and PRA have finalised guidance to strengthen operational resilience in the sector. Both measures aim to reduce the harm associated with operational outages and data breaches. But they are also arriving at a time when cloud technology is being widely adopted.

According to IDC, the global market for public cloud services grew by 24.1 per cent in 2020, to $312bn. Cloud is fast becoming the technology that banks and financial firms will use to create the plumbing for their digital enterprise. That means any conversation about operational resilience will include cloud resilience, and its ability to meet the expectations of regulators. In September, the Bank of England said cloud service providers may have to comply with minimum resilience standards, amid growing reliance on a handful platforms.

How are firms looking at cloud resilience?

Companies can look at different scenarios to improve their understanding of cloud resilience. In the case of minor technical issues, which happen all the time, there are best practice approaches to follow: work can be placed in availability zones, which are protected in the event of outages; and it can also be stored in multiple regions where data centres are located.