Data Sovereignty and Compliance in Multi-Cloud Deployments: Evaluating Governance Models and Regulatory Challenges

Abstract

The rapid adoption of multi-cloud strategies has driven a sea-change in enterprise architecture, providing unprecedented scalability, operational resilience, and freedom from vendor lock-in while creating a new set of governance issues such as how to address compliance and data sovereignty across diverse cloud environments. As many organizations utilize multiple CSPs located in different jurisdictions, there are differences in data protection standards, data localization requirements, and privacy regulations between jurisdictions that lead to a fragmented global regulatory landscape in cloud computing. This article reviews the intersection of data sovereignty principles and regulatory compliance in a cross-cloud, multi-cloud, shared distributed cloud environment. It covers the key elements of governance, technical controls, and regulatory complexities, and distinguishes between key concepts such as data sovereignty, data residency, and jurisdictional compliance, as well as distributed cloud challenges. This article reviews possible governance frameworks and technical implementations and gives a practical framework of how organizations can comply with data sovereignty and still retain operational flexibility.