ISLAMABAD: The Securities and Exchange Commission of Pakistan (SECP) has cautioned that all business entities, while selecting Cloud Service Providers, must ensure that selected service provider does not offer the services through their data centres located in any hostile country, ie, India and Israel, etc.
According to the SECP’s Cloud Adoption Guidelines issued for Incorporated Companies/Business Entities, the Cloud Computing is a technological framework which offers a convenient, on demand access to a shared poll of resources such as servers, storage, and applications, over the internet.
The new guidelines will be applicable to all Business Entities (BEs) incorporated with Securities and Exchange Commission of Pakistan under the Companies Act 2017, Securities Act 2015, Insurance Ordinance 2000 and NBFC Regulations 2008 etc.
The BEs incorporated with the SECP but supervised by sector-specific regulators need to ensure compliance with sector-specific guidelines on Cloud-based services by their regulators. These guidelines pertain to all new IT investments, which are to be made by any regulatee, as well as for migrating legacy applications and data to cloud. These guidelines will become effective from June 1, 2021; however, earlier adaptation is encouraged.
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The SECP stated that several free cloud computing options exist for emails, document management and even CRM and ERP. BE just need to pay only its usage exceeds in number of user count or storage space. Some cloud services providers also offer the free trial periods to the users. The BE must review services before deciding to buy these services. Assess if the cyber security requirements, which are based on the Pakistan Cloud First Policy 2021, National Cybersecurity Policy 2021, sector specific guidelines, authentication requirements and other specific cyber security measures and regulations are met by the Cloud model under consideration.
A BE incorporated with SECP is an organization that would typically have many employees. These business owners are well aware of cloud computing. They have adopted cloud computing for its economies of scale, ease of use and low cost. Many BEs have been on the leading edge of public cloud advocacy and adoption. Cloud facilitate in reducing/eliminating capital expenditures (Capex), gives flexibility to launch or scale a business; however, it will be a business decision of the BEs based on control on their data and cost savings in the short vs long term.
The SECP said that there is a strong demand for cloud adoption by BEs for cloud-based server capacity, information and database management, security, system and user access management, ERP, CRM and collaboration tools. Throughout the adoption process, BEs need to focus on the areas of trust, security, legal, compliance and organizational issues.
While performing the planning in adoption of cloud in business, every individual in business have their different opinions. Overall, respondents willing to consider purchasing of cloud solutions and needs are recorded and considered to identify the actual requirement of cloud adoption in business.
The BE must have to understand how to gain access to the services and get huge benefit by using these services of cloud.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2021
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