NIS2 Directive

(33) Cloud computing services should cover digital services that enable on-demand administration and broad remote access to a scalable and elastic pool of shareable computing resources, including where such resources are distributed across several locations. Computing resources include resources such as networks, servers or other infrastructure, operating systems, software, storage, applications and services. The service models of cloud computing include, inter alia, Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS), Software as a Service (SaaS) and Network as a Service (NaaS). The deployment models of cloud computing should include private, community, public and hybrid cloud. The cloud computing service and deployment models have the same meaning as the terms of service and deployment models defined under ISO/IEC 17788:2014 standard. The capability of the cloud computing user to unilaterally self-provision computing capabilities, such as server time or network storage, without any human interaction by the cloud computing service provider could be described as on-demand administration. The term ‘broad remote access’ is used to describe that the cloud capabilities are provided over the network and accessed through mechanisms promoting use of heterogeneous thin or thick client platforms, including mobile phones, tablets, laptops and workstations. The term ‘scalable’ refers to computing resources that are flexibly allocated by the cloud service provider, irrespective of the geographical location of the resources, in order to handle fluctuations in demand. The term ‘elastic pool’ is used to describe computing resources that are provided and released according to demand in order to rapidly increase and decrease resources available depending on workload. The term ‘shareable’ is used to describe computing resources that are provided to multiple users who share a common access to the service, but where the processing is carried out separately for each user, although the service is provided from the same electronic equipment. The term ‘distributed’ is used to describe computing resources that are located on different networked computers or devices and which communicate and coordinate among themselves by message passing.