Where in the world is the cloud?

The cloud could be anywhere, and that matters. If a provider suffers an outage or a region becomes unavailable, knowing the exact location of your data helps you determine your exposure and respond with confidence.

Most organisations in the financial sector now depend on cloud services to store, process and protect sensitive information. While the cloud brings flexibility and speed, it also creates a challenge for CISOs, TPRM teams and procurement leaders. The moment data leaves your environment and enters a supplier’s cloud; you need to understand exactly where it is and how it is being protected.

When this is unknown, several risks emerge. Outages in a single region can disrupt critical services. Backup locations may introduce unseen dependencies. Incident response becomes harder when you cannot identify which region was affected.

Without visibility, organisations lose the ability to make informed decisions and to take timely mitigating action.

What You Need to Know About Your Cloud Data: A CISO’s Checklist 

To manage cloud related supplier risk effectively, you need clear, accurate and up to date information on how and where your suppliers store and protect your data. The essentials include:

• Where the primary data centre is located

• Whether data is replicated in more than one region

• If backup and failover sites are domestic or overseas

• Security Certifications such as ISO127001, Cyber Essentials and Cyber Essentials Plus, SOC2

• Understand the service model (SaaS, PaaS, IaaS)

• Subcontractors that support the cloud environment

• How often resilience and failover tests are performed

• Data protection: encryption, access, controls, location

• Sovereignty

• Up time SLAs, Redundancies, Incident response processes, Recovery Point Objective (RPO), Recovery Time Objective (RTO)

• Risk assessment frequency

This information forms the foundation of a strong third-party cloud risk assessment. It allows CISOs to understand exposure, TPRM teams to validate supplier controls and procurement teams to make better sourcing and contracting decisions.

How FSQS Gives You the Visibility You Need

FSQS gives CISOs, TPRM teams and procurement leaders access to clear, validated information on how and where suppliers use cloud services. This includes hosting locations, cloud provider details, data residency considerations, encryption controls, subcontractor involvement and resilience measures such as backups and failover arrangements.

The value is simple. The information you need is already collected, checked and kept up to date, so you can trust what you are reviewing. There is no need to chase suppliers, interpret inconsistent formats or verify documents yourself.

With reliable supplier cloud data available in one place, you can compare providers quickly, identify gaps in their controls and assess whether their cloud practices align with your security and regulatory expectations. This supports faster onboarding, more consistent assurance and clearer decision making across cyber, procurement and TPRM functions.

The world will never be still. New risks, new threats and new challenges will continue to emerge, often without warning. But instead of chasing documents or piecing together incomplete cloud information, you can focus on what matters: building confidence in your supply chain and taking action quickly when needed.

Knowing where your suppliers host data allows you to validate controls, ensure compliance and strengthen operational resilience before an issue occurs.