Europe's Top Court Rejects 'Safe Harbor' Ruling

On October 6, 2015 Europe’s top court rejected ‘Safe Harbor’.

What is Safe Harbor?

'Safe Harbor' is an international agreement that allows companies to move digital information between the European Union (EU) and the United States. The court said that leaks have made it very clear that American intelligence agencies has visibility into the data being transferred and received — which was supposed to be encrypted and undecipherable — therefore infringing on the rights to privacy for European users or entities.

The courts want the European commission to complete a new ‘Safe Harbor’ Policy with the United States which could potentially take up to two years to implement.

What does it mean for my business and locations outside the United States?

Microsoft and other companies are keeping their services running stating that there are other agreements with the EU that are not affected by this ruling.

Our focus on this ruling is aimed only at Microsoft and their response in regards to this ruling.

Office 365 and Azure Core Services are some of the Cloud services that customers use for their business. But if you have an office in Europe and use Microsoft services, should you be concerned?

At this point the answer is no. Microsoft and other companies have made other agreements with the EU in the past couple of years to ensure that data transfer can still continue regardless of this ruling. Microsoft complies with EU Model Clauses. EU Model Clauses enable customers to move data between the EU and other places including the United States.

Microsoft President and Chief Legal officer wrote a blog about this ruling and you can find it by clicking the following link:

Hilltop stays on top of the latest technology news, and will update you on this developing story.