What is data sovereignty?

This episode of Techsplainers explores data sovereignty and why it has become a core part of privacy, security and governance strategy for organizations operating across cloud environments. The episode explains data sovereignty as the principle that data is subject to the laws of the country or region where it was generated, then clarifies how that concept differs from data residency and data localization. It also examines how sovereign cloud frameworks bring together data sovereignty, operational sovereignty and digital sovereignty to help organizations keep control while still benefiting from cloud computing. The discussion walks through why data sovereignty matters as more enterprise applications move to the cloud and as data-intensive technologies like AI and machine learning increase the need for fast, secure access to sensitive information. It also explains how sovereignty is determined, what happens when data crosses jurisdictions and why organizations often need to comply with more than one legal framework at once. Finally, the episode looks at deployment options, a practical three-step implementation approach and the key capabilities to evaluate in cloud providers, including governance, encryption, compliance expertise and resilience. Find more information at https://www.ibm.com/think/topics/data-sovereignty Find all the Techsplainers episodes here: https://www.ibm.biz/techsplainers-podcast Narrated by Matt Finio