We recently announced that the first Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) region in Madrid, Spain is now available and ready for customers. This region is our 40th public cloud region worldwide, and Spain is now the seventh country in the Europe with an Oracle Cloud region, bringing the value, performance, and innovation of OCI services closer to Spanish organizations.

OCI regions are certified under major commercial compliance standards like the International Organization for Standardization (ISO), Service Organization Control (SOC), Esquema Nacional de Seguridad (ENS) and others. For more information on OCI’s compliance attestations, visit the Oracle Cloud Compliance page.

Oracle realizes that customers operating in Spain have unique regulatory obligations. OCI customers are responsible for their regulatory compliance in their use of cloud services. In this blog post, we provide a few examples of regulatory considerations for customers evaluating OCI in Spain and the EU.

Supporting data privacy requirements in Spain

Providing the features and services that enable OCI customers to meet their data protection and privacy requirements is a top priority for Oracle. Although data privacy regulations vary from country to country the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) applies broadly to organizations based in the EU and elsewhere that collect and process the personal information.

As a founding member of the EU Cloud Code of Conduct (CoC), Oracle has demonstrated its commitment to GDPR compliance, and offers further assurance following the completion of its EU CoC Level 2 assessment. Oracle’s adherence to the framework has been verified by an independent assessor, and the result has been published in the EU CoC public register, meaning that OCI’s suite of services meet the stringent EU CoC requirements. OCI’s adherence to EU CoC can be used to demonstrate “sufficient guarantees” and can act as a risk-mitigating measure during a Data Protection Impact Assessment (DPIA), under Article 35 in the GDPR.

For more information about how OCI features and capabilities can help you address the requirements that arise from data privacy regulations, see the following resources:

Considerations for financial institutions

Financial institutions face unique regulatory requirements and must follow strict guidance when determining the suitability of using cloud computing to meet digital business needs. As a part of Oracle’s continuing efforts to help financial services customers perform their due diligence, the Advisory: Oracle Cloud Services and the European Outsourcing Guidelines (EBA, EIOPA, ESMA) was developed to help customers evaluate OCI in the context of their regulatory outsourcing guidance.

Even with strict regulatory requirements, customers like Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentaria (BBVA) are harnessing the scalability of OCI to improve business operations.

Investing in new regions

OCI continues to invest in features and services to help our customers address their security and compliance needs. For more information about OCI compliance programs, see Oracle Cloud Compliance. To request copies of our compliance reports, use the Compliance Documents service in the Oracle Cloud Console.

We’re deeply committed to making our customers successful in the cloud. For more information on using Oracle Cloud Infrastructure in Spain, contact one of our representatives.