Switzerland has a well deserved reputation for secrecy when it comes to banking, and now its hoping to ‘cash in’ on that legacy by providing a similar refuge for something that some say is even more valuable than our money – our data.

Since Ed Snowden first lifted the lid on the NSA’s PRISM data collection program, a growing number of companies have begin turning to data centers in the Alpine nation, where national laws offer a degree of protection from government spy agencies.

Once such company is Artmotion, which claims to be the largest offshore hosting company in Switzerland. Its CEO Mateo Meier said that the firm has seen revenue growth of around 40-50 percent in the last year, with companies from the tobacco, tech, finance and oil sectors all looking for someplace private to store their confidential data.

Fueling this drive to host data offshore is a desire to stay out of the NSA’s grasp. For those who missed it (and we’ve had quite a bit to say on the subject), the PRISM program allegedly allows the NSA direct access to the data of several major US-based Internet firms, including Google, Facebook, Microsoft and Yahoo. The worry is that this could also have implications for US-based cloud storage companies too – firms like AWS and Azure will now likely be viewed with suspicion from those who demand the best possible security for their data. Then again, cloud-hosted file sharing services like Dropbox and SkyDrive must also be considered as no longer being 100 percent secure.

Moreover, it appears that government data collection isn’t limited to the US. The UK, through its Project Tempora, and more recently France have both had their own data collection operations exposed, and its difficult to imagine that countries like Russia and China don’t have similar programs running in the background.

Swiss Data Banks

According to Meier, Artmotion serves all manner of companies that have confidential data they need to protect. To provide the level of security its clients need, Artmotion operates a physically secure data center just as US cloud firms do, but its key advanatage is derived from Switzerland’s strict data protection laws:

“As the country is not a member of the EU, the only way to gain access to the data hosted within a Swiss data centre is if the company receives an official court order proving guilt or liability. This procedure applies to all countries requesting any information from a Swiss data centre and unlike in the EU there is no special law for the US.”

Meier adds that many companies turn to Artmotion after their data has been compromised. Typically, its clients impose a security program in which all vital data is stored on its Swiss servers, whilst using special applications on company laptops which allow employees to access the data but never download it.

The US remains at the forefront of the cloud computing industry by some distance, but as I have pointed out previously, that position could be under threat now that the NSA’s shady practices are common knowledge. It’ll take some time, but the novelty of being based outside the US and away from any prying eyes could well become a major attraction for clients who value data integrity first and foremost. If and when that happens, countries like Switzerland could emerge as serious rivals to their US counterparts in the cloud computing space.