LONDON, July 10 : Britain on Friday designated cloud service providers Microsoft, Google, Amazon and Oracle as 'critical third parties', bringing them under direct regulatory oversight to protect the country's financial system."As banks, insurers and financial market infrastructures become increasingly reliant on cloud services, disruption at a major supplier could affect multiple firms at the same time, potentially impacting services customers depend on," the government said in a statement. To that end, it designated Microsoft Ireland Operations Ltd, Google Cloud EMEA Ltd, Amazon Web Services EMEA SARL, and Oracle Corporation UK Ltd as critical third parties, effective July 13.