Amazon Web Services (AWS) has announced that it will launch the AWS European Sovereign Cloud, a new and independent cloud for Europe, to assist public sector clients and those in highly regulated industries in meeting the most strict regulatory data residency and operating requirements.
The AWS European Sovereign Cloud will be physically and logically separate from existing AWS Regions, with the same security, availability and performance, providing customers with additional choice to meet their data residency, operational autonomy and resiliency needs. The AWS European Sovereign Cloud will launch with its first AWS Region in Germany and will be available to all European customers.
Customers will have the same control and confidence that AWS won’t access or use their data for any reason without their consent as they have with current AWS Regions, in addition to access to the best sovereignty controls available among top cloud providers. The AWS European Sovereign Cloud will only be operated and supported by EU residents who work for AWS and are based in the EU. The AWS European Sovereign Cloud, which will have its own billing and use metering systems, will enable clients with enhanced data residency needs to store any metadata they produce (such as the roles, permissions, resource labels and configurations they use to run AWS) in the EU.
“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,” said Max Peterson, vice president of Sovereign Cloud at AWS. “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.”
Peterson added that the new offering will give customers and partners in Europe more options to achieve the operational independence they need without compromising on the most comprehensive and in-depth cloud services that millions of customers are already familiar with and use today.
“The development of a European AWS cloud will make it much easier for many public sector organizations and companies with high data security and data protection requirements to use AWS services,” according to Claudia Plattner, president, of the German Federal Office for Information Security (BSI). “We are aware of the innovative power of modern cloud services, and we want to help make them securely available for Germany and Europe. The C5 (Cloud Computing Compliance Criteria Catalogue), which was developed by the BSI, has significantly shaped cybersecurity cloud standards, and AWS was, in fact, the first cloud service provider to receive the BSI’s C5 testate. In this respect, we are very pleased to constructively accompany the local development of an AWS cloud, which will also contribute to European sovereignty, in terms of security.”
