AWS announces new data-secure AWS European Sovereign Cloud

AWS re:Invent

Key Takeaways

AWS is launching the AWS European Sovereign Cloud, an independent cloud region for Europe, designed to help public sector customers meet regulatory data residency and operational requirements.

The AWS European Sovereign Cloud will ensure that only EU-resident AWS employees can access and manage operations, allowing customers to retain control over their data and keep all metadata within the EU.

This initiative aims to provide enhanced sovereignty controls, privacy safeguards, and security features, catering to the needs of highly regulated industries and reinforcing AWS's commitment to operational independence for European customers.

AWS is launching its new AWS European Sovereign Cloud to help public sector customers meet regulatory data residency and operational requirements.

The AWS European Sovereign Cloud is an independent cloud for Europe that will be separate from existing AWS regions, but with the same security, availability and performance. This gives customers additional choices to meet their data residency, operational autonomy and resiliency needs.

Also similar to existing AWS regions, customers’ data will not be accessed or used by AWS without its agreement. Only EU-resident AWS employees who are located in the EU will have control of the operations and support for the AWS European Sovereign Cloud. Customers with enhanced data residency needs will be allowed to keep all metadata they create (such as the roles, permissions, resource labels and configurations they use to run AWS) in the EU, and will feature its own billing and usage metering systems.

This innovation will give its customers in highly regulated industries and the public sector further choice and flexibility to address evolving data residency and resilience requirements in the European Union. It will also be sovereign-by-design and built on more than a decade of AWS’ experience in operating multiple independent clouds for the most critical and restricted workloads.

Max Peterson, vice president of sovereign cloud, AWS said: “The AWS European Sovereign Cloud reinforces our commitment to offering AWS customers the most advanced set of sovereignty controls, privacy safeguards and security features available in the cloud.

“For more than a decade, we’ve worked with governments and regulatory bodies across Europe to understand and meet evolving needs in cybersecurity, data privacy and localization, and more recently, digital sovereignty. With this new offering, customers and partners across Europe will have more choices to achieve the operational independence they require, without compromising on the broadest and deepest cloud services that millions of customers already know and use today.”​​