When choosing a cloud service provider, a question often asked by IT professionals is “where is my data going to be stored?” This question is now prevalent more than ever as stricter data compliance controls and measures are trending in the IT global community. To combat these risks, it’s crucial for organizations to have a fundamental understanding of data security and data sovereignty.
What is it?
Data sovereignty refers to when digital data is subject to the laws or legal jurisdiction of the country in which it is stored.
Why is it important?
Due to the fact that privacy regulations are not the same in every country, organizations should pay close attention to where their data is stored and know the exact location to ensure they’re compliant with regulations to mitigate legal and financial risks.
Seven things you need to know about Data Sovereignty:
- Countries such as Canada and EU member states (with the introduction of the GDPR) have stricter data residency and sovereignty laws, which require data to remain in country in order to protect their citizen’s personal information.
- Compliance, privacy and auditing are the number one concern and poses the greatest security challenge for IT professionals.
- Privacy and data residency requirements vary by country and cloud service users need to consider the rules that cover each of their local jurisdictions they operate in as well as the rules that govern how data is treated at locations/data centres where CSPs run their services.
- Data Sovereignty is similar to, but not the same as data safety. Good practices of keeping data safe is common within most organizations to safeguard personal or company data. Data sovereignty on the other hand is regulated on the government level and is a set of laws cloud providers have to abide by.
- No solutions provider can actually guarantee data sovereignty, therefore organizations should be fully abreast of their CSPs position on sovereignty and know all the risks associated.
- To ensure you remain compliant, understand the laws where your organization is based but also in every country where you do business…this may be of utmost importance if you are in a heavily regulated industry (i.e. banking, healthcare).
- You may not consider data sovereignty to be a big deal, but it is. It’s important to know the location of your cloud based provider, where your data is stored and backed up as these factors could affect your legal liabilities and regulatory compliance.
Ready to learn how Asigra makes it easy to meet your regulatory compliance needs?