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The fight for digital sovereignty moves into the cloud

Governments and technology providers are building infrastructure to keep sensitive data under domestic control.

Concern over foreign legal reach partly fuels the debate in Europe and Africa.
Concern over foreign legal reach partly fuels the debate in Europe and Africa. (A. C./Unsplash)

Governments are asserting greater control over the digital infrastructure that stores and processes sensitive information, turning data sovereignty from a regulatory ambition into a question of who operates computing systems, controls access and determines which national laws apply.

The infrastructure push was visible Tuesday when Germany’s Deutsche Telekom announced a partnership with Apheris that would allow hospitals and researchers to analyze sensitive medical data without transferring patient records from their existing systems.

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