Summary
- Around 74% of surveyed business decision-makers were concerned about losing access to US technology providers following government intervention.
- More than half said they could operate for no longer than one business day without cloud and digital services.
- Only 44% reported having a documented business continuity plan that is regularly tested.
European businesses are increasingly treating dependence on US technology platforms as an operational resilience issue, with new research finding that more than half could keep operating for no longer than a business day if access to essential cloud and digital services disappeared.
A survey commissioned by Proton found around 74% of 1,500 business decision-makers in the UK, France, and Germany were concerned about losing access to US technology providers following government intervention. Concern was broadly comparable with respondents’ fears about ransomware and other cyberattacks.
The scenario remains hypothetical. The research does not establish that the US government is preparing to order technology companies to cut off European customers, nor does it measure the probability of such an intervention. It instead provides a view of how technology concentration and geopolitical uncertainty are entering business continuity calculations.
The study covered 500 respondents in each of the UK, France, and Germany between 15 and 24 July. Proton has a direct commercial interest in the subject: alongside the research, the Swiss technology company is promoting a business continuity service designed to provide fallback email, file storage, and other tools on independent European infrastructure.
The operational exposure described by respondents is substantial. More than half said their organisation could continue for no longer than one business day without cloud and digital services before having to shut down or suspend operations. Among larger businesses, more than a quarter estimated that a single day of downtime would cost more than €100,000.
Employee productivity and the ability to serve customers were the two most commonly identified consequences of sudden loss of access. Those effects are not unique to politically driven disruption: provider outages, cyber incidents, account suspensions, contractual disputes, and infrastructure failures can produce similar operational conditions.
Continuity planning was widespread but uneven. Proton found that 44% of respondents had a documented plan that was regularly tested, while another 36% had a formal plan that was not tested regularly. A further 13% relied on informal arrangements.
Email and cloud file storage were among the services most frequently covered by fallback arrangements. They are also functions increasingly bundled with identity, collaboration, calendars, documents, and administrative tooling under a small number of platforms, increasing the number of business processes that can depend on the availability of one provider.
Raphaël Auphan, chief operating officer at Proton, said: “The kill switch is no longer an abstract geopolitical concern but a business continuity crisis.”
The company’s language is deliberately stark, and the survey accompanies a product intended to address the problem it identifies. The underlying concentration question is broader than Proton’s preferred solution, however. Organisations that have consolidated communications, data, identity, and collaboration around one supplier can create a recovery dependency even where the primary platform itself is highly resilient.
European technology sovereignty has traditionally been discussed through regulation, procurement, data jurisdiction, and industrial policy. Operational continuity adds another dimension. Full replacement of a large US cloud or productivity platform can be technically difficult and commercially expensive, while maintaining enough independent capability to recover critical communications or access essential information is a narrower resilience problem.
That distinction also changes what meaningful preparation looks like. An alternative service that has never been provisioned, populated, or tested may provide little immediate value during an outage. Continuity depends on identities, data availability, routing changes, administrative access, and recovery procedures functioning together before a primary platform becomes unavailable.
The research therefore provides less evidence of an impending geopolitical shutdown than of businesses reconsidering how much interruption they can tolerate from technology providers on which daily operations depend. For many respondents, that tolerance appears to be measured in hours rather than days.
