Data sovereignty is the notion that data is under the jurisdiction of the country in which it is collected or processed and must remain within its borders. It is enshrined in most regulatory laws and is a critical audit requirement. Data sovereignty requirements typically mandate local storage and highly regulate how the data can be moved out of the country and for what reason. When applied to cloud-to-cloud backup that refers to the physical location of the data center for the backup. If your backed up data is managed and stored at a location that is not compliant, your organization runs the risk of fines and penalties. In this blog post, we will discuss why data sovereignty matters for your backup strategy and how you can ensure that your backed up data is stored in a secure and compliant location. 

What is Data Sovereignty?

Data sovereignty is the principle that a country has complete control over its data. This means that businesses must store their data in a location that is compliant with the laws of that country. For example, GDPR requires that all data collected on citizens must be either stored in the EU, so it is subject to European privacy laws, or within a country that has similar levels of protection. 

Why Does Data Sovereignty Matter for Your Backup Strategy?

There are a few reasons why data sovereignty matters for your backup strategy. First, if you are storing backups in a country that is not your own, you could be subject to that country’s laws. This could lead to your data being seized or accessed by the government of that country without your knowledge or consent. Second, if you are storing backups in a country with weaker data protection laws, your data could be at risk of being hacked or stolen. Finally, if you store backups in multiple countries, you will need to ensure that each location is compliant with the applicable data sovereignty laws. This can be a complex and costly process.

Additionally, Microsoft 365, Salesforce, Google Workspace, and other SaaS platforms are based on a shared model of responsibility where sovereignty plays an important role in data protection. While the company offers application availability and tolerance for faults and redundancy, it is ultimately the responsibility of the organization using its products to protect users and their data from breaches and data loss.

How a Regional Backup Data Center Can Help

The ability to store your backups in a regional data center ensures that your backups are compliant with data sovereignty laws. We expand on three key benefits of a regional data center for your backup strategy

Ensures Compliance with Data Sovereignty and Regulatory Laws

Regional data centers enable companies to preserve data sovereignty and compliance with various regional regulatory laws. For instance, this year, France’s national cybersecurity agency (ANSSI) revised SecNumCloud – its cybersecurity certification and labeling program to mandate that companies store data locally. Additionally, France took over the Presidency of the Council of the European Union with digital sovereignty as a key theme for its mandate.

Mitigates Data Privacy Concerns

With recent surveillance scandals, data sovereignty and customer privacy have become major issues. As a result, more countries are trying to keep their citizens’ data within their own borders as stored data is subject to the laws and general practices of the country where it is held. This may seem like stating the obvious, but the data privacy laws can drastically vary from one country to the other. A significant case in point was the Microsoft Vs United States case where the U.S. government required Microsoft to disclose contents of a customer’s email account. Microsoft won it based on the fact that the information was stored in Microsoft data centres based in Ireland. Ensuring that your customer’s data resides in the same country as the customer, and hence is subject to the laws of that land, aligns your data privacy mandate with your customer’s expectations.

Improved Latency

Another benefit of storing your backup data in a regional data center is that you will have access to faster speeds and lower latency.  This is because the data center will be located closer to your users. This can be beneficial for businesses that need to frequently access th