In a cloud-first world, data is the lifeblood of every organisation. Digital sovereignty is an organisation’s ability to adequately control where its data is stored, how it is secured and who can access it, all while meeting complex regional regulations and compliance requirements.
Yet, as cloud adoption accelerates, digital sovereignty has emerged as a critical concern for IT decision makers, compliance experts, CISOs and business executives.
With data privacy laws tightening globally, and industries such as healthcare, finance and the public sector facing stringent governance rules, the challenge lies in balancing regulatory compliance with the innovation, scalability and resilience that the cloud offers.
AWS positions itself as a partner of preference, helping organisations navigate the complexity without compromising on performance or security.
Why digital sovereignty matters
In today’s interconnected world compliance requirements vary by country and region. Data residency rules dictate where information must be stored and processed while security and cloud governance standards demand verifiable control over access.
Failure to meet these obligations can result in legal penalties, reputational damage and operational disruption. For organisations operating in multiple jurisdictions, the complexity multiplies, making it essential to find a trusted cloud partner.
Key challenges in digital sovereignty
Different regions imposing unique compliance frameworks adds to regulatory complexity. From GDPR in Europe to HIPAA in the United States, navigating these various rules requires granular control over data location and processing. And data residency regulations that mandate that sensitive data remains within specific geographic boundaries can be challenging for global organisations with distributed teams and workloads.
Ensuring that only authorised individuals can access data requires strict security and access control procedures that need to be proved to regulators as a fundamental requirement for compliance.
How can AWS help you to overcome digital sovereignty challenges?
AWS has made a Digital Sovereignty Pledge, committing to provide the most advanced set of sovereignty controls and features available in the cloud, wherever you are.
Using data location controls, you can deploy workloads in any AWS Region worldwide. AWS Dedicated Local Zones can provide an exclusive infrastructure, fully managed by AWS in customer-specified locations to run sensitive or other regulated industry workloads. Data encryption and storage locations and can be monitored using data residency controls via AWS Control Tower.
Verifiable data access controls, such as the AWS Nitro System which enforces restrictions so that no one, including AWS staff, can access customer workloads without authorisation. Independent validation ensures transparency and trust.
AWS ensures data encryption everywhere – in transit, at rest and in memory with customer-managed encryption keys, including External Key Store (XKS), for data stored outside AWS.
As well as security, resilience and high availability are a priority, especially during supply chain disruption, network interruption and natural disaster. Multiple Availability Zones provide fully isolated infrastructure partitions while services like AWS Resilience Hub, AWS Backup and AWS Elastic Disaster Recovery maintain operational continuity.
Digital sovereignty in the real world
Healthcare establishments can store patient records in specific AWS Regions to meet national health data regulations, while encrypting all data with customer-managed keys.
Finance institutions can use AWS Nitro and encryption controls to ensure sensitive financial data is processed securely, meeting compliance with PCI DSS and regional banking laws.
Public sector agencies can deploy workloads in AWS European Sovereign Cloud to meet stringent operational autonomy and data residency requirements.
Why choose TD SYNNEX and AWS as your digital sovereignty partner?
TD SYNNEX is an AWS Premier Partner with a dedicated Public Sector team that can guide partners on how to be compliant without sacrificing cloud benefits. AWS combines global scale with local compliance expertise, offering advanced sovereignty controls, transparent operational practices and a network of AWS Digital Sovereignty Competency Partners to guide implementation. With no-compromise innovation AWS can help you to enable compliance without sacrificing cloud benefits.
Are you ready to take control of your data and navigate the complexity of digital sovereignty?
Discover how TD SYNNEX and AWS can help your public sector organisation meet compliance, security and cloud governance requirements, without compromise.
