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Redmond (dpa) - Microsoft has launched a far-reaching product offensive to address data protection concerns in Europe.
Customers of the software giant in the European Union should in future be able to process and store their data at Microsoft exclusively in the EU.
"We will not have to move your data outside of the EU," Microsoft President Brad Smith announced on Thursday in a blog post.
Microsoft is responding to two rulings by the European Court of Justice (ECJ) on data exchange between the USA and Europe.
At the instigation of data protection activist Max Schrems, the court initially overturned the “Safe Harbor” agreement in October 2015.
Last June, Schrems brought down the successor regulation “Privacy Shield” before the ECJ.
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With the two judgments, commercial data transmission to the USA had largely been deprived of its legal foundation.
In the opinion of the ECJ there is no comparable level of data protection in the USA as in the EU.
Above all, the US “Cloud Act”, which grants US secret services extensive rights to access company data, is viewed critically.
The new US administration under President Joe Biden had recently shown openly to sign a new comprehensive data protection agreement with the EU.
The new Microsoft offer of an “EU data border” is aimed at customers in companies and public administration, not at private users.
The obligation will apply to all central Microsoft cloud services - Azure, Microsoft 365 (including Microsoft Office and Teams) and Dynamics 365.
However, it remains unclear whether the data border can eliminate the legal uncertainties when transferring data between Europe and the USA.
According to reports, the Microsoft group is still legally responsible for the cloud data.
The company from the US state of Washington is subject to US law.
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The access rights of US services could, however, be technically invalidated if customers effectively protect their cloud data themselves.
"Many of our services put the control over the encryption of the data in the hands of the customer," said Microsoft President Smith.
It would use keys that are not managed by Microsoft, but by the customers themselves. "We protect our customers' data from unlawful access by any government in the world," said Smith.
© dpa-infocom, dpa: 210506-99-488717 / 2
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