France’s Thales Partners With Google on Secure Cloud Services

The logo of French defence and electronics radical Thales is seen astatine the company's office successful Merignac adjacent Bordeaux, France connected March 22, 2019. (Regis Duvignau/Reuters)

PARIS—Defense institution Thales and Google are partnering to connection state-vetted unreality computing services for the retention of immoderate of France’s astir delicate data, the companies said connected Wednesday.

The confederation betwixt Thales, Europe’s largest defence electronics supplier, and the Alphabet portion fulfils a May authorities program nether which France acknowledged U.S. technological superiority successful the field.

The French authorities said past that unreality computing services developed by Google and Microsoft could beryllium utilized to store France’s astir delicate authorities and firm data, provided the services were licensed to French companies.

The logo of Google is seen connected a gathering astatine La Defense concern and fiscal territory successful Courbevoie adjacent Paris, France, connected Sept. 1, 2020. (Charles Platiau/Reuters)

In their associated statement, Thales and Google Cloud said they volition make a France-based institution and Thales volition beryllium the bulk shareholder.

That institution volition supply the full scope of Google Cloud’s services but its web and servers would beryllium abstracted from those utilized for regular Google clients.

“The institution is going to tally Google bundle connected its infrastructure … with layers of information to guarantee cyber-security and extortion of information from extraterritorial rules,” said Marc Darmon, caput of unafraid communications and accusation systems astatine Thales.

Google and Microsoft, on with marketplace person Amazon.com’s Amazon Web Services, predominate unreality retention worldwide, fuelling concerns successful Europe implicit the hazard of surveillance by the United States successful the aftermath of the adoption of the U.S. CLOUD Act of 2018.

The Thales-Google concern volition request the blessing of France’s cyber-security bureau ANSSI to get a “trusted cloud” label.

However, its head, Guillaume Poupard, has already welcomed the project, saying successful a connection it fulfilled the criteria needed for the certification.

The institution should beryllium created successful first-half of 2022 and beryllium moving by the commencement of 2023, the 2 groups said.

It would vie against Bleu, a associated institution to beryllium acceptable up by IT consulting steadfast Capgemini and telecoms radical Orange and which aims to usage Microsoft’s unreality technology.

By Mathieu Rosemain