The European Banking Authority (EBA) has contacted Google for details on the outage of the Google Cloud europe-west2 region in London on 20 October and its effects on European institutions, Reuters reported. The UK FCA and the Bank of England through the PRA have also asked for information. Google Cloud is designated a critical third party in the UK and must report such incidents. UK MPs have also asked for explanations on the timeline, the cause and redress.

What it means: The regulators' response is the first real test of the new frameworks for critical third-party technology providers, both DORA in the EU and its UK counterpart. Until recently supervisors could oversee only the banks, not the cloud providers they depend on. Under DORA, the European supervisory authorities gain direct oversight tools for providers designated as critical, and Google is among them. The outage showed that a problem in a single region of one provider can hit many banks at once. For Greek banks, payment institutions and fintechs, the incident is a practical example for continuity planning: systems hosted in one region of one provider need a tested fallback, either in another region or with another provider. DORA also requires major ICT incidents to be reported to the competent authority within strict deadlines, and those affected should already have reported. Businesses outside finance that also rely on the cloud can apply the same thinking: know which region your critical systems run in and what happens if it stops.

Read the original on Reuters (via Investing.com)

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