The European Union is heading up a development project designed to improve the security and reliability of Cloud computing.
A consortium of European research groups from seven countries are collaborating in the research into Trustworthy Clouds (TClouds), which aims to prototype networks that are secure, resilient and private for utility and healthcare providers.
The EC will contribute funding to the three year research project, which is backed by firms including IBM, Portuguese utility companies Energias de Portugal and EFACEC, and the San Raffaele Hospital in Italy.
"Today, data can be gathered everywhere and accessed by anything, but doing so doesn't come without some risk, including security and data loss," Matthias Schunter, technical leader for TClouds and computer scientist at IBM Research said.
The project will design a multiple backup framework to prevent data loss in the event of hardware failure or hacking, and develop remote verification mechanisms to ensure network security. Cross-border implementation of Cloud computing is also on the agenda.