In the digital age, organisations are increasingly recognising the importance of data sovereignty. Basically, the ability to control the location, access, and security of their data. As a leading cloud provider, AWS is committed to helping you achieve digital sovereignty through its Digital Sovereignty Pledge. In this blog post, I will explore the concept of digital sovereignty and how AWS' Digital Sovereignty Pledge can help you maintain control over your data. I will also provide a roadmap for you to get started on your journey to sovereignty in the cloud. If you have any questions or would like to learn more about how AWS can help you achieve digital sovereignty, contact me today.

Digital sovereignty: understanding the concept

Digital sovereignty has emerged as a pivotal concept in the modern digital landscape. Gaining prominence as concerns about data privacy, security, and compliance escalate. It encompasses two fundamental aspects: data sovereignty and operational sovereignty. Data sovereignty refers to an organisation's ability to control the location and processing of its data. While operational sovereignty entails the authority to make independent decisions regarding data management practises.
Digital sovereignty empowers you to take charge of your data's destiny. This includes determining where it resides, who has access to it, and the purposes for which it is used. By exercising control over data, organisations can safeguard sensitive information, comply with regulatory requirements, and maintain their reputation.
Digital sovereignty is important because it keeps your data safe from people who shouldn't have it. This includes people inside and outside the organisation. It mitigates the risk of data breaches, unauthorised data transfers, and data loss. While preserving the integrity and confidentiality of sensitive information. This becomes particularly crucial in industries that handle vast amounts of personal or confidential data, such as healthcare, finance, and government. The protection of intellectual property is crucial in the realm of high technology, making sovereignty a significant factor to consider.

Digital Sovereignty Pledge

AWS' Digital Sovereignty Pledge is a set of commitments designed to help you retain control over your data, protect it from unauthorised access, and ensure its integrity and confidentiality. The pledge is based on four key principles:

Control over the location of your data:
You have full control over the location of your data, choosing the regions where it is stored and processed. This ensures that data remains within the desired geographic boundaries and complies with specific regulatory requirements.
Verifiable control over data access:
You maintain granular control over access to your data, determining who can access it and the specific permissions granted. This enables you to implement robust security measures and audit trails. Guaranteeing that only authorised individuals have access to sensitive information.
The ability to encrypt everything everywhere:
AWS provides comprehensive encryption capabilities, allowing you to encrypt your data at rest, in transit, and during processing. This multi-layered approach further enhances data protection and mitigates the risk of unauthorised access.
Resilience of the cloud:
AWS' cloud infrastructure is designed to be highly resilient, with multiple layers of redundancy and disaster recovery mechanisms. This ensures that organizations' data remains accessible and protected even in the event of hardware failures or natural disasters.

By adhering to these principles, AWS empowers you to achieve digital sovereignty and safeguard your data in the cloud. The pledge provides a framework for organisations to maintain control over their data, ensuring compliance with regulatory requirements and preserving the integrity and confidentiality of sensitive information.
AWS Digital Sovereignty Pledge: Control without compromise

Control over the location of your data

AWS gives you control over the geographic location of your data. This includes the ability to choose the specific data centres and regions where your data is stored, processed, and replicated. You can retain data in the region of your choice and avoid transferring data across borders unless you explicitly choose to do so.
This level of control is essential for organisations that operate in multiple countries or regions, or that are subject to strict data privacy regulations. By choosing the location of your data, you can ensure that it remains within the jurisdiction of your country or region, and that it is protected by the appropriate laws and regulations.
In addition, AWS provides you with granular control over the location of your data within each region. You can choose to store your data in a single availability zone, or you can distribute it across multiple availability zones for redundancy and availability. You can also choose to replicate your data to other regions for disaster recovery purposes.
By giving you control over the location of your data, AWS helps you meet your data sovereignty requirements and protect your data from unauthorised access.

Verifiable control over data access

With AWS, you have verifiable control over data access. This means you can easily see who can access your data and when. This commitment is supported by several key features:
The ability to verify who can access your data and when:
AWS provides detailed logs and reports that allow you to track and monitor all access to your data. This can include information about the user, the time of access, the IP address, and the type of access (read, write, delete, etc.). This level of transparency enables you to quickly identify any suspicious or unauthorised access attempts.
The Nitro approach: Protection from cloud operators:
AWS employs a unique approach called Nitro to protect data from potential unauthorised access by cloud operators. Nitro is a custom-designed chip and operating system that is integrated into AWS' servers. It provides a hardware-based root of trust and establishes a secure communication channel between the server and the customer's virtual machines. This prevents cloud operators from accessing customer data, even if they have physical access to the servers.
The ability to revoke access to your data at any time:
AWS allows you to revoke access to your data at any time, for any reason. This can be done through the AWS console, the AWS CLI, or the AWS SDK. Revoking access immediately terminates all active sessions and prevents the user from accessing the data again.
The ability to audit access to your data:
AWS provides comprehensive auditing capabilities that allow you to track and review all access to your data. This includes the ability to generate reports, set up alerts, and perform forensic analysis. The audit logs can be used to identify trends, detect anomalies, and investigate security incidents.
A shared responsibility model:
AWS operates on a shared responsibility model, where AWS is responsible for the security of the cloud infrastructure, and the customer is responsible for the security of their data and applications.
This model provides you with flexibility and control over your data, while ensuring that AWS maintains the highest levels of physical and cybersecurity.
With these measures, AWS lets you control who can access your data. This protects sensitive information and helps you meet regulatory requirements.

The ability to encrypt everything everywhere

AWS enables you to encrypt your data at rest, in transit, and in use. This powerful capability ensures that your data remains protected throughout its lifecycle, even in the event of a security breach.
You can choose to manage your own encryption keys or use AWS Key Management Service (AWS KMS). AWS KMS is a highly secure and scalable cloud-based key management service that allows you to create, manage, and control the use of encryption keys. With AWS KMS, you can easily encrypt your data and control access to it, ensuring that only authorised users can decrypt it.
You can also control who has access to your encrypted data. AWS allows you to define fine-grained access policies that specify who can access your data and what they can do with it. This level of control helps you protect your data from unauthorised access and use.
AWS also provides robust auditing and logging capabilities that allow you to track and monitor encryption-related activities. This information can be used to detect and investigate security incidents, and to ensure compliance with regulatory requirements.
AWS KMS External Key Store (XKS) is a new feature that allows you to store your encryption keys in a hardware security module (HSM) that you own and manage. This provides an additional layer of security for your encryption keys, as they are never stored in the cloud.
With AWS XKS, you can be confident that your encryption keys are protected from unauthorised access, even if AWS itself were to be compromised.

Resilience of the cloud

The resilience of the cloud is paramount for organisations of all sizes, as it ensures the uninterrupted availability and accessibility of critical applications and data. AWS stands out in this regard, offering a highly resilient platform that empowers you to operate with confidence.
AWS' global infrastructure offers diverse options for you to deploy applications and data. It consists of multiple regions and availability zones. This geographic distribution significantly reduces the risk of disruptions caused by natural disasters, power outages, or regional network failures. Even if one region experiences an issue, applications and data can be seamlessly rerouted to other regions, ensuring continuous operation.
In addition to its global infrastructure, AWS offers Local Zones and Outposts, which bring cloud services closer to you. Local Zones are strategically located in major metropolitan areas, providing ultra-low latency access to cloud services for applications that require real-time processing or proximity to end-users. Outposts, on the other hand, are on-premises infrastructure that extends AWS services to your own data centres or remote locations. This hybrid approach allows you to leverage the benefits of the cloud while maintaining control over sensitive data or following specific regulatory requirements.
Furthermore, AWS' Snow Family provides a solution for customers with remote or limited connectivity locations. Snow devices are portable data transfer appliances. They let you securely transfer data to and from AWS, even without a reliable internet connection. This capability is particularly valuable for organisations operating in remote areas, such as mining sites, oil rigs, or disaster-stricken regions.
With AWS' reliable cloud infrastructure, you can:

• Improve your operational efficiency.
• Reduce risks.
• Ensure your critical applications and data are always available.

Whether operating globally, locally, or in remote environments, AWS provides the flexibility and reliability that organisations need to thrive in today's competitive landscape.

The old and existing plus the new

AWS' public cloud has always been built on a foundation of security and compliance. The Digital Sovereignty Pledge builds on this foundation by providing you with even more control over your data and applications. This includes the ability to choose the geographic location of your data, control who has access to it, and encrypt it using your own keys.
One of the new features introduced with the Digital Sovereignty Pledge is the ability to fully isolate encryption keys from the cloud. This means that you can now generate, manage, and store your encryption keys completely on-premises. This provides an additional layer of security and control for organisations who are concerned about the security of their data in the cloud.
The Digital Sovereignty Pledge also includes a number of other features that give you more control over your data, including:
The ability to choose the geographic location of your data.
You can choose to store your data in any of AWS' regions around the world. This gives you the flexibility to choose the location that best meets your needs for data privacy and compliance.
Control over who has access to your data. You can use IAM to control who has access to your AWS resources and what they can do with them. This allows you to restrict access to your data to only those who need it.
The ability to encrypt your data using your own keys. You can use AWS KMS to encrypt your data using your own keys. This gives you complete control over the encryption and decryption of your data.
AWS' Digital Sovereignty Pledge is a powerful tool that gives you more control over your data and applications in the cloud. This pledge provides you with the flexibility, security, and compliance that they need to meet your business requirements.

Your journey to the sovereign cloud

Migrating to a sovereign cloud environment is a strategic decision that requires careful planning and execution. Here's a roadmap to help you get started:
Assess your current data sovereignty posture:
The first step is to assess your organisation's current data sovereignty posture. This includes identifying the location of your data, who has access to it, and what security measures are in place to protect it.
Identify your data sovereignty requirements:
Once you know your current data sovereignty posture, you can identify your data sovereignty requirements. This includes determining which data must be stored in a sovereign cloud environment and what level of control you need over that data.
Implement the necessary AWS services and features:
AWS offers a variety of services and features that can help you meet your data sovereignty requirements. These include the ability to choose the geographic location of your data, control who has access to it, and encrypt it using your own keys.
Monitor and audit your sovereign cloud environment:
Once you've set up the AWS services and features you need, it's important to keep an eye on your sovereign cloud environment. This will help you make sure it's running safely and following your data sovereignty rules.
Get started today:
AWS is committed to helping you achieve your data sovereignty goals. Contact me today to learn more about our Digital Sovereignty Pledge and how I can help you get started on your journey to the sovereign cloud.