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When you make a decision to entrust your data to a cloud services provider for productivity services, privacy—along with security and compliance—is uppermost in your mind. With Office 365, we are continually developing technologies and best practices to enhance privacy in our services. Beyond this, we make contractual commitments to protect your privacy as an Office 365 customer.
On April 10, in a blog post by Brad Smith, our General Counsel, we announced that our contractual commitments for Office 365 and for our other cloud services for business, Microsoft Azure, Microsoft Dynamics CRM, and Windows Intune, were recognized as meeting the rigorous standards of European Union (EU) privacy law. This ensures that you can use Microsoft Office 365 and move data freely through our cloud from Europe to the rest of the world. Why is this such big news? Because Microsoft is the first—and so far the only—cloud services provider to receive such approval from the Article 29 Working Party, which consists of representatives from each of the 28 European Union data protection authorities (DPAs) and the European Commission and plays a critical role in global privacy law.
Find out more about this news and how it benefits you by reading the blog post Privacy authorities across Europe approve Microsoft’s cloud commitments by Brad Smith, our General Counsel and Executive Vice President of Legal and Corporate Affairs. For more information about the Article 29 Working Party and data protection regulations and agreements, read this list of frequently asked questions.
Privacy is a key tenet for Office 365. Please visit our Office 365 Trust Center, where we share important information regarding security, privacy, compliance, and other topics related to earning and maintaining your trust in Office 365.