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Switzerland
Regulations
This page provides AWS financial institution customers with information about the legal and regulatory requirements in Switzerland that may apply to their use of AWS services.
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Yes. Financial institutions in Switzerland are permitted to use cloud services, provided that they comply with applicable legal and regulatory requirements, such as those described below.
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The Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority (Eidgenössische Finanzmarktaufsicht) (“FINMA”) is Switzerland’s key financial supervisory authority. FINMA supervises persons and entities that under the Swiss financial market acts are required to be licensed, recognized or registered by FINMA (including, inter alia, banks, securities dealers, stock exchanges, multilateral trading facilities, central counterparties, central securities depositories, trade repositories, payment systems, insurance companies, collective investment schemes and collective capital investments, fund management companies, fund distributors, and directly supervised financial intermediaries).
- Circular 2023/1 - Managing operational risks and ensuring operational resilience - banks
- Circular 2018/3 - Outsourcing – banks and insurers
- Circular 2008/21 - Operational risks at Banks, in particular Principle 4 and Appendix 3
The AWS Swiss Financial Services Addendum provides Swiss regulated customers with specific contractual terms (in addition to those provided in the AWS Customer Agreement) to assist them in meeting their regulatory requirements. Please reach out to your AWS account team for details.
Financial institutions in Switzerland may be subject to a number of different legal and regulatory requirements, including on outsourcing arrangements, when they use cloud services.
Where AWS performs all or part of a function that is significant to the financial institution’s business activities independently and on an ongoing basis, the following relevant FINMA regulations for outsourcing and management of operational risks apply. The regulations set out requirements regarding, among others, the selection, instruction and monitoring of a service provider, the rules on the segregation of duties, risk management and internal controls, and provide that financial institutions must maintain an inventory of outsourced functions.
Other applicable legal and regulatory requirements include, for example: recommendations issued by the Swiss Bankers Association, in particular the Cloud Guidelines and the Recommendations for Business Continuity Management (BCM); legislation in relation to the Banking Law (breach of banking secrecy); the Financial Market Infrastructure Act; the Federal Act on Financial Institutions; the Federal Act on Data Protection ("FADP") (breach of professional confidentiality); and the blocking statutes in the Criminal Code (unlawful activity on behalf of a foreign state and industrial espionage).
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 FINMA circulars, relevant guidelines (for example, from the Swiss Bankers Association and the Federal Data Protection and Information Commissioner), 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.
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. In particular, the ISAE 3000 Type 2 report verifies that AWS’s control environment is appropriately designed and implemented to align with certain FINMA requirements applicable to regulated financial services customers in Switzerland.
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 Switzerland using AWS services should also consider applicable privacy requirements, including the FADP and its Ordinance, as amended from time to time, and, where applicable, the General Data Protection Regulation (“GDPR”).
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 are included in the AWS whitepaper, Navigating GDPR Compliance on AWS.
The AWS Region in Switzerland is now open and allows customers to store data within Switzerland, and reduce latency to their Swiss customers. Visit the AWS Global Infrastructure page or read the press release for more information.
Resources
Country-specific
Guide to Financial Services Regulations and Guidelines in Switzerland
This guide provides information to assist financial institutions in Switzerland that are regulated by the Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority (FINMA) as they accelerate their use of AWS. This guide covers the respective roles that the customer and AWS each play in managing and securing the different aspects of a customer’s cloud environment, introduces the AWS security systems and the shared responsibility model, and provides an overview of Swiss regulatory requirements and guidance through the lens of a customer’s use of AWS.
The guide also lists additional resources designed to assist customers with architecting their AWS environment in a way that helps meet Swiss security and regulatory requirements.
AWS Local Page for Switzerland
Developers, startups, entrepreneurs, and enterprises, as well as government, education, and nonprofit organizations, will have even greater choice for running their applications and serving end users from data centers located in Switzerland, using advanced AWS technologies to drive innovation.
AWS FINMA ISAE 3000 Type 2 Report
Amazon Web Services (AWS) has completed the FINMA ISAE 3000 Type 2 Report. Completion of the ISAE 3000 Type 2 Report verifies that AWS’s control environment is appropriately designed and implemented to align with certain Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority (FINMA) requirements applicable to regulated financial services customers.
General
Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) on AWS
This guide provides customers with information to be able to plan for and document the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) compliance of their AWS workloads. This includes the selection of controls that meet specific PCI DSS requirements, planning of evidence gathering to meet assessment testing procedures, and explaining their control implementation to their PCI Qualified Security Assessor (QSA).
Using AWS in the Context of Common Privacy and Data Protection Considerations
This document provides information to assist customers who want to use AWS to store or process content containing personal data, in the context of common privacy and data protection considerations. It will help customers understand the way AWS services operate, including how customers can address security and encrypt their content. The geographic locations where customers can choose to store content and other relevant considerations. The respective roles the customer and AWS each play in managing and securing content stored on AWS services.
AWS Compliance Quick Reference Guide
AWS has many compliance-enabling features that you can use for your regulated workloads in the AWS cloud. These features allow you to achieve a higher level of security at scale. Cloud-based compliance offers a lower cost of entry, easier operations, and improved agility by providing more oversight, security control, and central automation.
The purpose of this paper is to describe how AWS and our customers in the financial services industry achieve operational resilience using AWS services.
Data Classification and Secure Cloud Adoption
This paper provides insight into classification schemes for public and private organizations to leverage when moving data to the cloud. It identifies practices and models currently implemented by global first movers and early adopters, examines how implementation of these schemes can simplify cloud adoption, and recommends practices to harmonize national requirements to internationally recognized standards and frameworks.
AWS Policy Perspectives: Data Residency
This paper addresses: The real and perceived security risks expressed by governments when they demand in-country data residency. Commercial, public sector, and economic impact of in-country data residency policies with a focus on government data. Considerations for governments to evaluate before enforcing requirements that can unintentionally limit public sector digital transformation goals leading to increased cybersecurity risk.
This document is intended to provide information to assist AWS customers with integrating AWS into their existing control framework supporting their IT environment. This document includes a basic approach to evaluating AWS controls and provides information to assist customers with integrating control environments. This document also addresses AWS-specific information around general cloud computing compliance questions.
Guidelines for systematically reviewing and monitoring your AWS resources for security best practices.
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