Control without compromise: Data sovereignty for financial services

What do you think of when you hear “data sovereignty”? Most people think data sovereignty is the same thing as data security. But there are some important nuances that make data sovereignty especially important for organizations across all verticals, especially financial services.

For starters, data sovereignty is about having complete control over where your data lives, who can access it, how it’s governed, and how it complies with a multitude of financial regulations without stifling growth. As cloud and AI technologies become more pervasive and as geopolitical and economic dynamics shift in real time, data sovereignty is more important than ever.

For financial institutions, the pressure to control, secure, and govern sensitive data across complex hybrid cloud environments is especially high. In an industry where the margin for error is zero, how can you ensure data sovereignty without compromising innovation or flexibility?

There are four key factors to achieving data sovereignty:

• Data security: Safeguarding data from unauthorized access, breach, or cyberthreats.
• Data residency: The physical location where your data is stored.
• Data privacy: How sensitive data is collected, used, and shared in compliance with regulations, including GDPR and PDPL.
• Data sovereignty: The legal concept that dictates where data can be stored and processed.

If even one of these requirements is not met, you could be liable for hefty non-compliance fines. But it’s not enough just to tick a box. You need to ensure that your compliance doesn’t come at the cost of innovation.

In the fast-moving world of financial services, you need to be constantly innovating to drive efficiency, accelerate insights, improve decision-making, and deliver new customer services quickly. But you can’t forget about protecting sensitive business and customer data if you’re going to stay within compliance regulations and keep your customers happy. How can you stay ahead of your competitors without getting caught with compliance violations?

NetApp^® data sovereignty solutions have the flexibility and enterprise-grade security features you need to accelerate innovation and nurture growth while maintaining compliance. NetApp helps you meet compliance requirements while giving you the freedom to innovate within your sovereign boundaries.

With NetApp solutions for data sovereignty, you get:

• The most secure storage on the planet with security and privacy features that are built in, not bolted on. Our solutions align with GDPR, DORA, and other security frameworks to keep your customer and business data safe.
• Quantum-proof encryption for data in flight and at rest, and external key management. If your data is stolen or intercepted, it cannot be accessed or unencrypted by anyone but you, not even NetApp.
• Built-in AI-powered ransomware protection that provides 99% detection accuracy with instant, proactive response to stop potential attacks in their track and enable quick recovery if needed.
• Top-level security certifications including Common Criteria (ISO/IEC 15408) and FIPS 140-2 as well as alignment with interoperability standards such as NATO STANAGs, UK MOD Cyber Essentials, and emerging PESCO frameworks.
• Support for compliance across the data lifecycle with built-in classification solutions that provide privacy insights and reports, along with compliance software that prevents data deletion by NetApp, third parties, or any unauthorized users.
• AI-ready data pipelines that enable you to accelerate innovation and growth. Our solutions allow you to scale AI safely and confidently with full lifecycle governance and compliance, including audit-ready evidence for regulators.

And we’re not in this alone. We depend on our partnership with sovereign cloud providers like AWS, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud to enable you to run sovereign workloads anywhere while staying protected and governed at scale. From on-prem to the cloud and everywhere in between, NetApp lets you innovate with ease while maintaining audit-ready evidence for regulators.

From the trading floor to online payment and banking, NetApp enables you to build a sovereign data ecosystem that enables compliance, enhances security, and fosters innovation. Get ready to take control of your data sovereignty journey with NetApp.