.Securing Digital Sovereignty for regulated Industries

As the digital world continues to evolve, the regulated sector is challenged to maintain strong controls over personal data.. The concept of digital sovereignty not only safeguards governments and corporations from losing control over their data on a routine basis, but empowers them to take advantage of what is already technologically available with the intelligence of the cloud. Critical Infrastructure (KRITIS) regulated sectors and domains like finance, healthcare, energy and telecommunication sectors have a high level of data governance for security, compliance and local control of data needs. AWS is such a robust platform to tackle these type of challenges that, with secure, resilient and compliant cloud services, organisations can innovate without boundaries.

Understanding the Challenges of Digital Sovereignty

Digital sovereignty can be divided into 3 pillars, data sovereignty, technological independence and security.

Data sovereignty is an essential component of digital sovereignty. Governments and regulated sectors must protect sensitive information, secure data sovereignty and protect data from unauthorised access. There are various regulations for this, including:

• Germany's critical infrastructures (KRITIS) are defined and regulated by their essential services. An independent and reliable source for KRITIS specifications is OpenKRITIS.
• The financial sector is regulated by DORA and ensures its digital resilience.

To gain more insights into data sovereignty and effective practices, check out our blog post about Confidence in the cloud with data sovereignty.

Technological independence means freeing yourself from dependence on a single provider. By using AWS technologies, your organisation can gain flexibility, eliminate dependencies and drive innovation. Here you can get a deeper insight into how to maintain technological independence in the AWS cloud.

Security is a key pillar of digital sovereignty, protecting organisations from cyber-attacks while also ensuring compliance, resilience and reliability. Security as the foundation of digital sovereignty helps you to promote trust, protect sensitive data and prevent reputational and financial losses.

Traditional Data Centers vs. Cloud: Cutting Costs and Complexity

Moving to the cloud eliminates the complexities of traditional data center management, offering organizations greater agility, cost savings, and operational efficiency.

✅ Simplified Operations - Cloud services eliminate the need to manage cumbersome physical servers and complex network configurations, freeing your teams to create value and scale the business with speed.

💰 Cost Efficiency: Cloud computing reduces the capital and operational expenses of maintaining, upgrading, and securing on-premise data centers. With a pay-as-you-go-modell, you pay only according to the usage, thus optimizing costs for scalability.

🔄 Flexible Service Models: IaaS, PaaS, SaaS - Scale and tune your cloud model with different approaches that will provide a mix of control versus flexibility, suitable to meet each organization's business needs.

🔖 Built-in Compliance – Take advantage of certifications from AWS and other cloud providers (like C5) to ease the certification process, as many services already comply with industry standards.

Digital Sovereignty within AWS

AWS is committed to improving digital sovereignty, to overcome the challenges of data control, there is Confidential Computing, which encrypts sensitive and protects data from unauthorised access. In addition, ende 2025 is opening a European Sovereign Cloud, an isolated AWS cloud operated by a separate company. It provides a robust solution for organisations with strict data management requirements, especially in critical sectors. It also ensures that all staff operating this cloud or supporting customers are EU citizens and located in the EU.

AWS offers built-in services such as Audit Manager and Config for automated compliance monitoring and real-time reporting that ensure organisations meet ongoing compliance with ease.

With many services already C5 certified, AWS improves security in highly regulated industries by simplifying compliance through automated framework mapping, which lessens the complexity and burden of various compliance checks.

AWS Driving Innovation Across regulated Industries

Leading banks rely on AWS to safeguard financial transactions, ensuring compliance, data integrity, and protection from cyber threats. Insurance companies use AWS to effectively manage and process sensitive health data while upholding the highest security standards. At the same time, Deutsche Bahn counts on AWS to support and maintain its essential transportation infrastructure, guaranteeing reliability and operational excellence.

What's Next? Your next Steps

Join us for our Digital Sovereignty Kickoff webinar, where experts from AWS and us will share valuable insights and discuss essential strategies to ensure your digital sovereignty. Check out our Digital Sovereignty page to discover best practices, understand regulations, and find out how your organization can remain compliant while keeping control of your data.