Amazon Web Services is introducing a new, independent cloud for Europe that gives customers in highly regulated industries and the public sector more choice when addressing data residency and resilience requirements in the EU. It will be physically and logically separate from existing AWS Regions.
Located and operated within Europe, AWS European Sovereign Cloud will allow customers to keep all metadata they create in the EU. 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, AWS has revealed. It will have its own billing and usage metering systems.
Customers, AWS Partners, and regulators welcoming the new AWS European Sovereign Cloud, include German Federal Ministry for Digital and Transport, Deutsche Telekom, O2 Telefónica in Germany, Telia Company, Accenture and Deloitte. Among approx. 20 companies and organisations listing their support, the German Federal Office for Information Security (BSI), the National Cyber and Information Security Agency (NÚKIB) in the Czech Republic, and National Cyber Security Directorate of Romania are listed.
AWS European Sovereign Cloud is designed to help public sector customers and those in highly regulated industries meet the most stringent regulatory data residency and operational requirements. It provides the same security, availability, and performance as existing AWS Regions, giving customers 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. AWS says the new cloud will give customers access to the strongest sovereignty controls among leading cloud providers. All metadata created can stay in the EU. This includes roles, permissions, resource labels, and configurations used to run AWS.
“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,” states 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 localisation, and more recently, digital sovereignty. With this new offering, customers and Partners across Europe will have more choice 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.”
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