Even in the U.S. recently there has been quite a bit of discussion about giving the president an "Internet kill switch" for disabling Internet services during national emergencies, noted industry analyst Michael Osterman from Osterman Research.

"If organizations are reliant on cloud-based services, this would be a critical problem," Osterman said via e-mail.

Such a scenario is one reason to work into cloud-based deployments a series of offline capabilities that would allow users to continue working even if they lose Internet access, he said.

"For example, having the ability to work on documents while the cloud is not available is a major benefit. It won't allow employees to communicate, but will offer them to remain at least somewhat productive," Osterman said.

An obvious precaution is to have, as a backup, satellite-based phones and Internet access, which are much harder for governments to block, said Gartner's Paulak.