New Keepit research: Data sovereignty is becoming a frontline security issue

Keepit has released a new report — Data Sovereignty: Take Control of Your Data — along with expert commentary from CISO Kim Larsen that breaks down why sovereignty has moved beyond compliance and is now a core security and resilience concern. The report notes that many organizations believe sovereignty is a legal or CIO priority, but the research shows it is increasingly a security architecture challenge.

Key Themes: The research highlights several issues now directly impacting SOC, IR, and cyber-resilience teams:

  • Hyperscaler monoculture = single points of failure. 97% of cloud infrastructure sits with a handful of providers, creating systemic risk when outages or misconfigurations cascade across SaaS, identity, and backup platforms.
  • CLOUD Act + Schrems II = conflicting access rules. Security teams must defend information that may be legally accessible to foreign jurisdictions — even when stored in-region.
  • Hybrid warfare is targeting cloud identity and control planes.
    The report details growing APT activity against cloud identity providers and the risk of dependent ecosystems failing simultaneously.
  • Most SaaS backups rely on the same hyperscalers as production.
    Making “air-gapped” recovery impossible in many breach or outage scenarios.
  • Regulators are raising the bar on resilience.
    Under DORA, NIS2, BaFin, and CNIL/ANSSI guidance, CISOs must demonstrate independence, portability, and provable control — not just encryption and regional storage.

Why this is timely for security practitioners

  • Attackers are exploiting cross-cloud dependencies.
  • Resilience mandates are forcing redesigns of backup + identity strategy.
  • EU regulators are signaling that US-controlled clouds may not meet sovereignty requirements for healthcare, public sector, and critical infrastructure.
  • Organizations are reassessing “cloud-by-default” models and returning to hybrid or sovereign-cloud setups for high-value assets.

Report Download:
https://www.keepit.com/data-sovereignty-in-the-cloud/

Expert Commentary:
https://www.keepit.com/blog/data-sovereignty-report

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