An article published in the Waterloo Record reported that the renegotiation of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) may affect Canadian data and the privacy of its citizens. The U.S. has proposed that Canadians should be prohibited from storing their private data exclusively on Canadian servers, arguing that “data should be allowed to flow freely across borders.” Supporters of the terms proposed for data sharing include Altaz Valani of Security Compass, who claims that the vast majority of data that businesses and governments collect is non-sensitive. Valani and other supporters of the NAFTA propositions believe that both the U.S. and Canada can enhance the innovation of new technologies by sharing valuable, non-sensitive data with each other.
“The issue of data proprietorship is existential for Canada.”
However, Jim Balsillie, chair of the Council of Canadian Innovators and former CEO of RIM, asserts that the Canadian government has a responsibility to resist the American attempt to free the flow of digital data across borders. He claims that this issue of data proprietorship is “existential for Canada,” and that American policymakers seek to impose regulations that don’t make sense for Canada: “My fear is that our trade negotiators are guided on data policy by the big U.S. tech firms who tell us what’s good for Silicon Valley is good for Canada.”
At FoxNet we understand the complexities of protecting and managing your data and regulatory requirements. We’re able to deploy your data to our many data centres, as well as public, private and hybrid cloud solutions, and ensure proper controls are in place to manage and protect your data. In addition, by using any of our 47 tier 3 and tier 4 global data centres, or a blend of centres and cloud, we are able to ensure your data remains in the areas required to meet your privacy and regulatory controls.
The challenge identified during the NAFTA agreement negotiations is only one of the many global challenges organizations need to understand when determining how to manage data. With new changes happening daily in the global data ecosystem, which drive additional data privacy and regulatory hurdles, FoxNet is able to develop hybrid blended solutions with clients to segment and pocket data in the country areas, while also enabling the company to pull global information together.
Interested in getting smart about your data? Contact us at FoxNet to get started!
