The path to European data sovereignty
In 2020, the European Parliament published a briefing document which exposed “an increasing concern that citizens, companies and the Member States of the European Union (EU) gradually lose control of their data, their capacity for innovation and their capacity to shape and apply legislation in the digital environment.”
At the heart of the question is the domination that the tastes of Amazon, Microsoft and Google have established on the European Cloud Computing market. One of the effects of their success is that the region is now faced with significant challenges to ensure that data is subject to laws and governance structures in the country or the region in which it is collected, stored or treated.
For organizations based in the EU hosting their data with suppliers based elsewhere, this raises serious questions about which has its competence on this data and if it can be governed by foreign legal frameworks independent of their will.
Let’s also be clear – the peak hyperscalers offer efficiency, scale and a multitude of other convincing advantages. These are all very innovative trust suppliers who have transformed the operation of companies and have made extraordinary digital progress at speed and scale.
Thousands of European organizations count – and will continue to count – these brands for a good reason. At the same time, however, it is also essential that organizations understand that where they store their data and under the jurisdiction of which it falls, implications far beyond.
Whether through a political, economic or operational lens, data data data. In certain scenarios, it can shape access rights, trigger regulatory obligations or even expose organizations to a geopolitical risk.
For example, the laws of a country could oblige a cloud supplier to share data stored in another, a problem which has been reported in relation to executive powers and national security mandates available to foreign governments.
So how does the landscape change? First, there are a number of promising European cloud initiatives, including regulatory developments, sovereign cloud executives and consortium-based models designed to create local alternatives to the all-in-one hypersculeuse. However, these solutions are not without challenges, with cost, fragmentation, scalability and potentially exercised adoption obstacles from an effective regional system.
For many organizations, a complete switch is not viable due to problems such as existing investment commitments, operational complexity and simple absence of mature and similar alternatives which can correspond to the scale and capacities of established suppliers.
American hyperscalers are also presented to the law. Last year, for example, AWS announced its intention to invest 7.8 billion euros in the European sovereign cloud AWS, an initiative which, according to the company, strengthens its “commitment to offer customers the most advanced set of sovereignty orders, confidentiality guarantees and security features available in the cloud”.
It remains to be seen how it takes place, but whatever the road organizations favorable to the search for data sovereignty, access to choice and autonomy on the place where their data is stored are likely to grow in importance over time.
The role of intelligent data management
For European organizations in this position, and there are many, the good news is that they do not need to wait for systemic changes in the cloud landscape to start regain control. The sovereignty of the data can be addressed today thanks to the implementation of modern technologies for managing neutral data, which allows them to visualize their entire data landscape and apply coherent policies in disparate storage environments.
Armed with a unified view of their data in cloud and local environments, organizations can then make enlightened choices on the data to be stored, where to store it and the best way to save it.
The obvious starting point is visibility because, without knowing what data exists, where it resides and how it moves, companies fly blind. This is particularly significant and difficult in contemporary multi-cloud and hybrid environments, where data can be extremely fragmented, often with little consistency or surveillance.
But by establishing a clear image of all data assets, classifying them according to sensitivity and commercial value and ensuring that local copies of critical data are always available, IT management can also apply policies that align with governance and regulatory requirements.
In the end, it is not only a problem of technology and geography; This goes much deeper to cover everything, commercial resilience and compliance with control and, in the end, customer confidence. The digital future of Europe will depend not only on the place where its data live, but on which can access it, to govern it and to protect it.
While the briefing of the sovereignty of data from the European Parliament concludes, “create a secure pan -European data framework and adopt new standards and practices to provide trustworthy and controllable digital products and services would ensure a safer digital environment.”
We list the best cloud storage.
This article was produced as part of the Techradarpro expert Insights channel where we present the best brightest minds in the technology industry today. The opinions expressed here are those of the author and are not necessarily those of Techradarpro or future PLC. If you are interested in contributing to know more here: https://www.techradar.com/news/submit-your-story-to-techradar-pro
