Nokia moves phone data centres to Europe for improved security
Nokia is to move its phone data centres from Asia to Europe as part of a company plan to better protect customer data.
The centres, which store Nokia device activation and performance data, are to be moved to Hamina in Finland, with the firm saying the move will improve the speed of updates to phones as well as allow it to better comply with EU data laws like General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).
The move has been announced by Finnish firm HMD Global, the licensee of Nokia’s phone brand as part of a new partnership with Google Cloud and IT consultancy firm CGI.
Nokia has launched a major revamp of its mobile phone line-up in the last two years, releasing a number of new touchscreen smartphones as well as two updated versions of its classic mobile phones, including the 3310.
HMD chief product officer Juho Sarvikas said the data centre move would allow the company to improve user experience as well as security by taking advantage of Google Cloud machine learning and data analytics technologies.
“Google Cloud and CGI were natural choices to be our strategic cloud partners thanks to our pre-existing close collaborations with them, which ensures that we’re implementing our leading data security and analytics technology at a global level,” he said.
“We want to remain open and transparent about how we collect and store device activation data and want to ensure people understand why and how it improves their phone experience.
“This change aims to further reinforce our promise to our fans for a pure, secure and up to date Android, with an emphasis on security and privacy through our data servers in Finland.”
The data migration is expected to be completed in 2020.
Previously, the data was stored on HMD Global servers based in Singapore, which the company says were also fully compliant with GDPR.
Data privacy and security has become an increasingly prominent topic in the technology industry, as more and more information moves online, and in the wake of several high-profile data breaches, most notably several involving Facebook.
