Data security is practice of preventing illegal access, disclosure, alteration, or destruction of digital information throughout its lifecycle. To protect data from potential threats including hackers, viruses, physical theft, and unintentional loss, it entails putting in place a framework of safeguards, policies, and technology.

Compliance refers to processing, storing and protecting data while abiding by particular laws, rules, standards set by the industry or internal policies. Compliance guarantees that businesses abide by rules set forth to protect sensitive data, uphold privacy, and reduce risks related to data breaches or penalties for noncompliance.

The increasing regulations governing data protection, residency and governance drive enterprises to pay more attention to data security and data compliance than ever before. National rules are going beyond data residency to cover data protection, governance, disclosures and reporting. National regulations include the PATRIOT Act (USA), GDPR (EU), Privacy Act (Australia/New Zealand), Personal Data Protection Act (Singapore/Malaysia/Thailand/Indonesia), Digital Privacy Act (Canada), and LGPD (Brazil) and more.

The EU’s GDPR has formed the basis of data privacy regulations around the world. A key principle of the regulation is secure processing of personal data. The UK GDPR states that security measures must ensure the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of data and protect against accidental loss, destruction, or damage.

And with focus on data protection compliance standards like National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program (FedRAMP) Payment Card Industry (PCI), International Organization for Standardization number 27001 (ISO27001), International Organization for Standardization number 27032 (ISO27032), British Standards Institution (BSI) and Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) compliance has never been a higher priority.

It’s easy to see why data security is so important, especially when handling people’s personal data. Loss can lead to issues like identity theft, whereas destruction, damage, and misuse of data can result in irreparable impact to both businesses and consumers in critical areas like government, healthcare, finance, and more. Another key part of data security is restricting who can access sensitive and restricted data, as well as trust and flexibility when portability is needed.

A sovereign cloud provides the data sovereignty benefits of a private cloud without the IT headaches for some of the most protected workloads. With a sovereign cloud, you maintain control of your data. A sovereign cloud ensures that other jurisdictions are unable to assert authority over data stored beyond their national borders or obtain access to it, providing the ultimate privacy and protection for all data, including metadata. It’s also easier to ensure your data adheres to rules about cross-border movement. Sovereign cloud enables customers to unlock data so that localized data within a nation can be harnessed to create additional value.

Compliance is critical to comply with data sovereignty laws, from where data is stored to who can access it. As laws continue to evolve, compliance staff are needed to understand and follow relevant local and industry regulations. Sovereign cloud providers have local compliance experts to keep up with the latest laws.

A sovereign cloud is managed by sovereign citizens to comply with strict data sovereignty rules. In a sovereign cloud, the resident domain is isolated from the provider’s core network and the internet. Management and control planes are hosted entirely within the sovereign cloud, with no external dependencies that could result in data leaving the sovereign boundary. No data is stored outside the country, including backups, metadata, accounting, or support information.

With a sovereign cloud, you can ensure the utmost security, including bringing your own encryption keys so the cloud provider cannot access your data. A sovereign cloud protects your data’s privacy and sovereignty through controls and services unavailable in commercial clouds.

The first step to complying with data sovereignty and privacy regulations is to understand your data, where it’s located, and the data residency, privacy, and sovereignty policies for each respective location. This requires classifying your data.

Sovereign clouds are secure in a completely locally built, attested platform that is customized, maintained, and compliant with local laws and regulations. Sovereign clouds should be run by experienced providers who know how to secure applications and data in the cloud against evolving attack vectors using advanced security controls with local compliance with data regulation laws and requirements to protect the highest and most sensitive data and workloads.

Sovereign clouds should be run by experienced providers who know how to secure applications and data in the cloud against evolving attack vectors using advanced security controls with local compliance with data regulation laws and requirements to protect the highest and most sensitive data and workloads. They should also use information security management system (ISMS) controls that are certified against an industry-recognized standard and audited regularly to maintain security.

To protect your data, sovereign cloud providers should employ micro-segmentation with zero-trust enforcement to ensure workloads cannot communicate with each other unless they’ve specifically been allowed to. Sovereign clouds should also be air-gapped and employ encryption in order to secure them from the outside world. A multi-layered security approach secures data and applications in the sovereign cloud, keeping them safe from loss, destruction, or damage.

The challenge with security and compliance is that data privacy laws specify how data must be treated to protect the privacy of personal, confidential, or secret data. These laws frequently include specific security requirements that organizations must take to protect their data. In addition, security measures are necessary to prevent data loss or leakage, which would result in violating laws.

Not only must organizations be compliant with these data privacy laws and industry regulations, but they must also demonstrate they are in compliance. With a growing number of privacy laws and frequent changes, maintaining compliance is becoming even more difficult, and non-compliance can result in hefty fines.

Having a robust data security and compliance strategy is critical in achieving higher standards of data protection demand by today's laws and regulations. VMware Cloud Providers offering sovereign cloud can help you attain integrity, security, and availability of information systems and sensitive data.

• Sovereign Cloud providers can protect your systems and data from security risks by adhering to the following:
• Data remains under sovereign control and avoids compelled access by foreign authorities
• Prioritize security against evolving attack vectors to protect your data and apps
• Sovereign cloud protection and compliance services exceed commercial, public clouds
• Capitalize on your data that you can share with trusted parties to vitalize national commerce
• Be prepared for evolving security and regulatory requirements
• Offer a secure and resilient cloud that leverages national economies and business growth