Today’s EU Cloud Compliance Summit signalled a key milestone for the cloud industry, announcing the official approval of the EU Cloud Code of Conduct and the accreditation of SCOPE Europe as its dedicated monitoring body.

Brussels, 20 May, 2021 – The EU Cloud CoC becomes the first-ever transnational code of conduct tackling all cloud layers to receive official approval by European Data Protection Authorities to ensure and prove GDPR compliance for all service types of cloud computing. 

In a video statement, Epignosis’s CEO and Co-founder Thanos Papangelis hailed the virtual event as, 

“…a historic event that celebrates the remarkable progress made towards compliance and trust for European cloud users and cloud providers”.

Last year, Epignosis became the first eLearning company to fully comply with version 2.2 of the Code.

EU Cloud CoC, pursuant to Article 40 of GDPR, will make it simple for cloud service users – particularly SMEs and public bodies – to determine whether a given cloud computing-based service is GDPR-compliant. In doing so, it will build trust in online services and raise the default level of data protection in the European cloud computing market, ultimately helping to accelerate the adoption of this key technology and bring the benefits of cloud computing to a wider section of  Europe’s economy.

Jörn Wittmann, SCOPE Europe’s Managing Director, stated:

“The approval of the EU Cloud CoC is opening a new chapter and setting a high-quality baseline to optimize GDPR compliance for every cloud service layer as well as for all company sizes”.

The Code is key to allow the proper dissemination and accessibility to cloud services, especially for SMEs, which became even more crucial post-COVID-19 outbreak. Praising Epignosis’s compliance with the Code, Mr. Wittmann added,

“As the Code’s dedicated Monitoring Body, SCOPE Europe is proud to have Epignosis as one of its first members to successfully demonstrate compliance to the Code, which further attests to the accessibility and unique added value of this initiative. We look forward to continuing this meaningful collaboration, always seeking to fostering trust and cohesion within the cloud industry while ensuring the enforcement of European data protection standards”.

In his statement during the event, that featured keynote speeches from high-level European officials, Epignosis’s CEO also offered his congratulations, 

“Everyone from the Code, SCOPE Europe, the industry and the EU Data Protection Authorities for this historic milestone that significantly advances trust and compliance assurance for European cloud users and the whole cloud computing industry.

We firmly believe that great companies are built on trust, empathy, integrity, diversity, and simplicity. At the core of building trust is robust data protection. In this context, privacy is embedded in our culture, rendering GDPR compliance for ourselves and our customers a top priority”.

Cloud computing is the backbone of the digital age, but a lack of a reliable framework to evaluate data protection compliance of cloud services has considerably slowed down the diffusion of this key technology and EU’s path towards digitalisation.

Now the Code, a product of years of meaningful collaboration between the European Commission, the EU Data Protection Authorities and the cloud computing community, is finally filling this gap. Setting an unparalleled market standard, it paves the way to the continuous development of co-regulatory initiatives, which are indispensable for the materialization of the digital transition.