CCWF2012 CIOs thinking of shifting to the cloud or kicking off a flagship big data project would be better off talking to their lawyers than their techies before starting to leaf through glossy corporate presentations.
Mark Webber, partner and head of technology at law firm Osborne Clarke, speaking at the Cloud Computing World Forum today, said that while the cloud and big data are the buzzwords du jour, CIOs' plans are still governed by UK and EU data law passed in the mid-1990s.
Personal data will be covered by whatever "promises" were made at the time it was collected.
"Sometimes the simplification of technology can complicate the legal analysis and cause more legal problems than with a traditional solution," he said.