Data Sovereignty Under GDPR: Requirements, Risks, and How to Comply
Blog post from Duality
Data sovereignty under the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) extends beyond merely storing EU citizens' data within EU borders, emphasizing jurisdictional control over how data is accessed, processed, and managed, irrespective of its physical location. This principle gained prominence following the Schrems II ruling, which necessitated stringent safeguards for data transfers to countries lacking "adequate" protections, highlighting the limitations of Standard Contractual Clauses (SCCs) alone and elevating sovereignty to a continuous risk assessment process. The US CLOUD Act poses a direct challenge to GDPR sovereignty by allowing US authorities to access data held by US companies, even if stored in the EU, which creates legal tensions for organizations using US-based cloud providers. To achieve compliance, organizations must implement a layered strategy of legal, organizational, and technical controls, including conducting thorough Transfer Impact Assessments (TIAs) and employing privacy-enhancing technologies like homomorphic encryption and federated learning to maintain data protection across borders. Key management, particularly the control over encryption keys, plays a critical role in safeguarding data sovereignty, as it prevents unauthorized access by ensuring that only the data controller can decrypt the data. Healthcare, finance, and government sectors, due to their handling of sensitive data, face heightened compliance demands, making GDPR data sovereignty a foundational requirement for operation.
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