Does CloudWatch satisfy FCA PS21/3 operational resilience monitoring?

CloudWatch satisfies FCA PS21/3 monitoring requirements: (1) CloudWatch Synthetics (external canary — polls IBS API endpoint every minute from outside the VPC, records availability from customer perspective — PS21/3 requires measuring IBS availability from customer viewpoint, not internal service health), (2) CloudWatch Alarms (alert on IBS availability < 99.5% — immediate notification to on-call engineer), (3) CloudWatch Logs (immutable — every application log retained 90 days, exportable to S3 for FCA audit), (4) CloudWatch Dashboards (IBS availability metrics — submitted to Board quarterly as Impact Tolerance evidence), (5) AWS Health Dashboard (AWS service disruptions — PS21/3 requires tracking third-party (cloud) outages). ClickMasters configures all 5 as standard for FCA-regulated applications.

Should Sentry logs contain customer personal data?

Sentry and UK GDPR: Sentry error reports can inadvertently contain personal data (error messages that include user email, stack traces with customer IDs, request payloads). UK GDPR requirements: (1) Sentry DPA must be signed (Sentry is a data processor), (2) Sentry data residency — Sentry EU (Frankfurt) required for GDPR compliance, (3) data scrubbing (Sentry has built-in PII scrubbing rules — configure to remove emails, credit card numbers, NHS numbers before sending to Sentry), (4) NHS clinical applications: never send any patient clinical data to Sentry — scrub all patient identifiable fields from error payloads. ClickMasters Sentry configuration: PII scrubbing enabled, Sentry EU region, DPA signed. For NHS clinical applications: additional scrubbing rules for NHS number, date of birth, clinical data fields.

Sentry Vs Datadog Vs Cloudwatch Uk 2026

Sentry vs Datadog vs CloudWatch — UK Application Monitoring (2026)

Q: Should Sentry logs contain customer personal data?

Sentry and UK GDPR: Sentry error reports can inadvertently contain personal data (error messages that include user email, stack traces with customer IDs, request payloads). UK GDPR requirements: (1) Sentry DPA must be signed (Sentry is a data processor), (2) Sentry data residency — Sentry EU (Frankfurt) required for GDPR compliance, (3) data scrubbing (Sentry has built-in PII scrubbing rules — configure to remove emails, credit card numbers, NHS numbers before sending to Sentry), (4) NHS clinical applications: never send any patient clinical data to Sentry — scrub all patient identifiable fields from error payloads. ClickMasters Sentry configuration: PII scrubbing enabled, Sentry EU region, DPA signed. For NHS clinical applications: additional scrubbing rules for NHS number, date of birth, clinical data fields.

Updated: April 20269 min read

🇬🇧 UK💷 GBP📊 Comparison🔒 UK GDPR⚖️ UK Law

Direct Answer

CloudWatch (AWS) + Sentry is ClickMasters' default for UK regulated applications: CloudWatch for infrastructure metrics (FCA PS21/3 IBS availability monitoring, NHS DTAC audit trail), Sentry for application error tracking (developer-facing, excellent source maps). Datadog is right when you need unified observability across many services and are willing to pay for it. Never use Datadog exclusively for NHS/FCA applications — CloudWatch is mandatory for AWS audit trail compliance. Monitoring stack choice affects FCA PS21/3 IBS availability evidence, NHS DSP Toolkit Standard 9 (cyber attack response), UK GDPR (error logs may contain personal data), and operational cost.

Factor	CloudWatch (AWS)	Sentry	Datadog
FCA PS21/3 IBS availability	✅ Synthetics — external IBS availability monitoring	Application errors only	Custom monitors available
NHS DSP Toolkit audit trail	✅ CloudWatch Logs — immutable, in AWS account	Sentry is third-party — logs leave AWS account	Datadog is third-party — logs leave AWS account
UK GDPR (error logs with PII)	✅ Same AWS account — no third-party processor	Sentry DPA required — logs to Sentry servers	Datadog DPA required — logs to Datadog servers
Developer error debugging	Limited — CloudWatch Insights verbose	✅ Best — source maps, breadcrumbs, user context	Good — Error Tracking available
Cost at medium scale	✅ Included in AWS bill (~£50–£200/month)	Free tier / ~£200/month (Team)	~£800–£2,500/month (medium scale)
Infrastructure metrics	✅ Native AWS — EC2, ECS, RDS, Lambda built-in	Not designed for infrastructure	✅ Deep AWS integration — expensive
Unified observability	Metrics + logs + traces (X-Ray)	Errors + performance only	✅ Best — metrics, logs, traces, profiling, APM
ClickMasters default	✅ All regulated UK applications (mandatory)	All UK applications (alongside CloudWatch)	Enterprise non-regulated with budget for it