Austria

Yes. Financial institutions in Austria are permitted to use cloud services, provided that they comply with applicable legal and regulatory requirements, such as those described below. 

The Financial Market Authority (FMA) is Austria’s financial supervisory authority and supervises, inter alia, credit institutions, securities markets and brokers, fund managers, pension funds, payment services providers, investment firms, and insurance companies.

The FMA collaborates closely with the Oesterreichische Nationalbank (National Bank of Austria) and the Federal Ministry of Finance (BMF) and provides micro supervision of individual financial institutions and market players to monitor compliance with legal requirements, fairness and transparency, and good governance.

The FMA prevents and punishes the unauthorized offering and provision of financial services and ensures that all financial institutions have the necessary systems in place to work preventively in relation to money laundering and terrorist financing.

The Digital Operational Resilience Act (DORA) is a pan-European legislative framework for operational and cyber resilience in the financial sector. DORA outlines the following:

• Improvements in information and communications technology (ICT) and security risk-management requirements
• A harmonized regime for ICT incident reporting
• Development of a digital operational resilience testing framework
• An oversight framework for critical ICT third-party providers

DORA doesn't restrict or limit how financial entities (FEs) subject to DORA requirements adopt and use cloud services.

Financial institutions in Austria may be subject to a number of different legal and regulatory requirements when they use cloud services. For example, the FMA has confirmed the applicability of the European Banking Authority Guidelines on outsourcing arrangements issued 25 February 2019 (“EBA Guidelines”) in Austria. The EBA Guidelines apply to EU-regulated credit institutions, investment firms, electronic money institutions and payment institutions, and provide guidance to these entities when they are using or planning to use cloud services. This guidance covers a variety of contractual and operational areas, including audit rights, security of data and systems, location of data and data processing, sub-outsourcing, and contingency plans and exit strategies.

Customers that have questions about the EBA Guidelines, and how these may apply to their use of AWS services, can reach out to their account representative.

Local regulations, guidelines, and laws in Austria (i.e., § 25 Austrian Banking Act - Bankwesengesetz - BWG) may also apply to financial institutions in Austria when they use cloud services.

Regulations are changing rapidly in this space, and AWS is working to help customers proactively respond to new rules and guidelines. AWS encourages its financial institutions customers to obtain appropriate advice on their compliance with all regulatory and legal requirements that are relevant to their business, including the EBA Guidelines and local regulations, guidelines, and laws.

AWS is committed to offering customers a strong compliance framework and advanced tools and security measures that customers can use to evaluate meet, and demonstrate compliance with applicable legal and regulatory requirements.

Financial institutions who are using or planning to use AWS services can take the following steps to better understand their compliance needs:

1. Consider the purpose of the workload(s) under consideration and the relevant categories of data in order to anticipate which legal and regulatory requirements may apply.

2. Assess the materiality or criticality of the relevant workload(s) in light of local requirements. For example, Section 4 of the EBA Guidelines contains materiality assessment considerations for financial institutions.

3. Review the AWS Shared Responsibility Model and map AWS responsibilities and customer responsibilities according to each AWS service that will be used. Customers can also use AWS Artifact to access AWS’s audit reports and conduct their assessment of the control responsibilities.

4. Customers who have further questions about how AWS services can enable their security and compliance needs, or who would like more information, can contact their account representative.

Financial institutions in Austria using AWS services should also consider applicable privacy requirements, including the General Data Protection Regulation (“GDPR”) and the Austrian Data Protection Act (Datenschutzgesetz or DSG).

If customers process or are planning to process the personal data of data subjects in the European Union (EU), they should visit AWS’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) Center. More information on these requirements is included in Navigating GDPR Compliance on AWS.