There’s a growing trend of tech giants building localized data centers to circumnavigate geographical barriers to business.
In the last few years, the volume and value of digital data has skyrocketed. Amidst ongoing digital transformation, modern organizations and nation states are increasingly reliant upon digital platforms as part of their operations, with intellectual property predominantly existing in a digital form. Whilst digitalization has brought considerable opportunity, there’s no reward without risk: the theft of data is a very real one that organizations are facing on a daily basis. Cyber-attacks are on the rise, with our recent research showing that one in five businesses have paid or would pay a ransom for their data. It’s clear that the data, hardware, and software that we rely upon and create are becoming increasingly high-risk, and therefore increasingly protected, commodities. With The World Economic Forum estimating that over 92% of all data in the western word is stored on servers owned by US-based companies, there’s been an escalating anxiety over the location and ownership of such data. Indeed, the fear of foreign entities compromising sensitive data has meant that ensuring it doesn’t fall into the wrong hands without permission has become a heightened priority for many. What’s more, until recently the misaligned jurisdictions of the EU’s GDPR law and the US’ FISA act invalidated the US-EU Privacy Shield, the legal protection umbrella that formerly enabled global enterprises to safely work and transfer data between the European Union and the United States. Although The European Commission and the United States recently announced a new Trans-Atlantic Data Privacy Framework to sufficiently manage such data exchanges, compliance within this ever-changing situation remains an overwhelming challenge. Indeed, with 1,800+ global compliance laws in force, the protection, privacy, and exchange of data sits within an incredibly murky landscape at present. This general nervousness and surge in regulation in recent years has ultimately prompted a shift towards localization and the home ground containment of data.
