For organizations in the EU, moving to the cloud brings up some important questions about control, data protection, and compliance with European laws like the GDPR. In this session, we’ll explore what digital sovereignty actually means when you’re working with Microsoft Azure.

We’ll start by looking at why this topic has become so important lately and what regulations are making us think twice about hosting our data with American Big Tech companies. Then we’ll dive into Azure’s portfolio to see what sovereign options are actually available in the cloud.

Key management is crucial for protecting our data, so we’ll discuss several different approaches. Beyond just encrypting stored data, confidential computing also protects our data while it’s being processed. We’ll look at how Azure supports compliance through data residency guarantees, policies, sovereign landing zones, and the EU Data Boundary. We’ll also briefly explore Azure Local as an option for keeping workloads on-premises while still benefiting from Azure services.

By the end, we’ll have a better understanding of whether all these measures are enough to ensure that personal data actually stays within Europe.

Assumed Knowledge:

You should have a basic understanding of Azure

Practical Takeaways:

Learn what various laws are at play in the sovereignty discussion, learn what we can do in Azure to be as much in control as one can be

Out of Session Scope:

Will not cover very specific use cases