While the whole world is moving to Cloud, some applications are still considered to be too sensitive or too critical to run from a cloud environment due to its nature, whether this is in a private cloud instance or space from a public cloud provider. Legal compliance functions like Lawful Interception and Data Retention belong to that category. Security, legislation, state secrecy, confidentiality are the typical arguments to keep these functions running in special secured datacentre environments of a communication service provider.

Last year’s digital transformation trends bootstrapped the adoption of cloud at communication service providers. Key business drivers for this adoption were improving their competitiveness through improved scalability, respond to demand and improve their time to market. The shift to cloud-primarily focused on non-critical services. However, with the introduction of 5G, NFV, MEC infrastructures, and its cloud-native services, also critical applications are now moving to the cloud. Embracing these new technologies and infrastructures does not remove their responsibility to remain compliant with the telecommunication regulations. As a result of this responsibility, CSPs started asking the market for cloud-based Lawful Interception or Data Retention Solutions.

Moving critical applications to the cloud comes with great responsibility. Privacy and security aspects, compliance with GDPR are obvious questions to be answered. However, when moving LI and DR functions to the cloud, Lawful interception or disclosure requests, including intercepted data of targets are typically not allowed to leave the country. Therefore, CSPs need to carefully plan and consider the consequences of moving critical applications to the cloud, particularly the impact of the various jurisdictions on the overall solution architecture.

With Group 2000’s latest releases of LIMA Lawful Intercept, LIMA Data Retention, and LIMA Disclosure Management, CSPs can choose next to the traditional deployment models also for a (private-)cloud-based deployment model. With the latter, the CSP automatically benefits from the flexibility, scalability, and high availability features provided by the cloud environment, while not sacrificing on security, confidentiality, and integrity of the offered solution.