Data sovereignty is a concept stating that an organization’s data is governed by the country’s laws in which said data is collected or physically stored. While companies still own their data, governments maintain varying authority over how that data is managed. The scope of these regulations changes with each country and region.

How does data sovereignty work?

Data sovereignty practices mandate that organizations handle data responsibly and securely, providing legal and ethical frameworks for protecting privacy.

Accordingly, following data sovereignty laws is key to regulatory compliance. You’ve likely heard of the European Union’s GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) laws and the United States’ HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act) guidelines, which exemplify this. The general idea is that companies don’t have complete freedom to sell or retain sensitive personal data to third parties. They must also adequately protect stored data from breaches. When breaches do occur, companies must often notify customers that a third party has accessed their information.

Overall, data sovereignty practices draw a line in the sand, controlling who accesses data and who uses it. Such processes can become more complicated when more than one country or authority has jurisdiction over company data. This is where concepts such as data residency and data localization come in:

  • Data residency: This refers to the location where data is actually physically stored or processed. Companies may choose to either store their data in the country where it was collected (like storing US customer data in the boundaries of the continental US) or offshore their data for a number of reasons. However, just because data is stored within one country’s borders doesn’t mean that other authorities can’t legally (or illegally) choose to access that data.

  • Data localization: This concept mandates that certain types of sensitive data, often in certain industries such as healthcare or finance, must be completely stored within one country’s borders. This protects individual privacy, making it harder for personally identifiable information (PII) to circulate. Localized data is also typically collected from customers in the region in which it’s stored.

Data sovereignty represents a balance between an organization’s autonomy to manage their data how they wish, while following important laws or best practices. There are two types of related sovereignty that can impact data handling:

  • Digital sovereignty: While digital sovereignty impacts how organizations manage assets such as software-based tools and infrastructure, it also influences who can access important data under specific circumstances. Organizations want to take local laws, regulations, and internal permissions requirements into account while storing data, while also enforcing policies and enabling periodic audits.

  • Operational sovereignty: Organizations should maintain uptime for their infrastructure components responsible for storing and managing data. These components should be accessible and easy to manage. By maintaining control over their systems, teams can respond faster to outages while ensuring failover protections are in place. Operational sovereignty represents a balance between how companies autonomously oversee their data and how they meet operational requirements enforced by local or regional authorities. Otherwise, organizations may encounter issues related to jurisdiction.

Each locale handles data sovereignty a little differently. For example, the United States doesn’t have a data localization mandate, which means organizations can hold and access data anywhere.

Such a policy contrasts with China’s national data policy, which requires strict data localization for personal information under the Personal Information Protection Law (PIPL). You’ll encounter a lot of data governance laws and regulations that cover the complete spectrum, from “hands-off” policies to stringent policies. There are even different subsets of the European Union’s GDPR tailored to various member countries.

Read more in our blog: NIS2 and DORA Compliance

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Does HAProxy support data sovereignty compliance?

Yes! Our HAProxy One security and application delivery platform is deployable anywhere. Accordingly, teams can configure HAProxy Fusion Control Plane and HAProxy Enterprise load balancer to meet data requirements for any country or region. HAProxy One works with your infrastructure no matter where data is stored or moves, keeping you compliant and secure.

HAProxy One also allows flexible traffic routing across selected regions (or availability zones) according to your data sovereignty policies. Bolstered by our edge fabric capabilities that enable you to host data exactly where you need it, HAProxy One gives you unmatched control over your digital infrastructure.

HAProxy One gives you control over where your data lives and who can access it. Request a demo to see how it maps to your regions and compliance policies.

FAQs

Data sovereignty is the principle that data is subject to the laws of the country where it is collected or stored. Data residency is narrower and refers only to the physical location where data is kept or processed. Data can reside in one country yet still fall under another jurisdiction’s legal reach.