In May 2009, at the Cloud Expo Europe in London, I announced my intention to form a cross-sector forum aimed at addressing the pressing security issues surrounding cloud computing. The goal was to ensure that cloud computing, especially as it becomes a critical part of the UK’s national infrastructure, remains secure and compliant with UK laws and regulations.

This initiative sought to bring together major public and private organisations, including the Confederation of British Industry (CBI), Microsoft, Accenture, and key government departments like the Treasury and the Department for Business, Enterprise, and Regulatory Reform (BERR). The forum was also set to involve the government’s chief scientific advisor, Professor John Beddington, to establish a comprehensive strategy for securing cloud services, ensuring data sovereignty, and addressing compliance challenges specific to the UK.

The need for this initiative was driven by growing concerns about the reliance on US-based cloud providers such as Amazon and Google, whose data centres were often located outside Europe. This raised significant issues regarding compliance with European data protection laws, particularly the risk of sensitive data being inappropriately accessed or shared due to differences in legal jurisdictions.

At the time, I emphasised the importance of the UK developing its own cloud capabilities to ensure that sensitive data remained under national control. This was crucial not just for compliance with the Data Protection Act and PCI-DSS regulations but also for maintaining the security and sovereignty of UK data.

The full details of this initiative and the challenges we aimed to address were covered in an interview with ZDNet, where I outlined the critical need for a secure and sovereign cloud infrastructure for the UK. You can read more about the interview and the planned forum in the original ZDNet article “Wayne Horkan, Sun’s UK chief technology officer, is to form a cross-public and private sector organisation to address cloud security issues“.