EU wants Data Centers to comply to CoC

My talk today at a dutch congress, was about security and compliance. Funny thing to see is the bewilderment of the public. This first initial nudge by the EU is a mere reminder that a very resounding governmental interventionism is definitely in the offing.

Compliance will come in many ways:

• There will be strong focus on an organization's CSER policy, one may be asked to demonstrate it periodically
  
• GRC (Governance, Risk and Compliance) will play major role in every strategy and organizations will be tested and funded (under-funded) accordingly

A snippet on the expected compliance w.r.t Data Management and Security

The EU is asking data centre owners and operators to "voluntarily" sign up to a Code of Conduct (CoC) which will include oversight of their energy efficiency in what could be green regulation through the back door.

The European Commission has issued its Code of Conduct for Data Centres Energy Efficiency and invited data centre owners and operators to sign up to it and commit to its best practices. This involves monthly monitoring of energy consumption and usage and an annual report to an EU secretariat

The driving force in the EU is a bureaucrat, Paolo Bertoldi (pictured) of the EU's Renewable Energies Unit. He has driven a working group over the past 18-24 months or so with a series of meetings composed of stakeholders - European government department reps such as our own DEFRA - and assorted manufacturers with a product sales or marketing interest such as Intel and Sun.

Bertoldi has worked indefatigably to build up his green empire and managed to enlist the support of multiple public sector bodies across Europe by building bridges, taking on work that they can't or won't do, and giving them participation without over-commitment in a tour de force demonstration of how to get something done in the EU.

El reg's coverage and check the docs, here, here and the reporting form