Why CIOs Need To Respond To Digital Sovereignty Now
CIO, Wednesday, August 20th, 2025
As data and clouds go regional, global CIOs feel growing urgency to adapt to an increasingly localized digital era.
The digital sovereignty movement is gaining momentum. Around the world, governments are introducing regional laws requiring local data residency or processing. Take Europe's Gaia-X sovereign cloud initiative, or the string of increasingly common hyper-local data laws like the EU's GDPR, India's DPDP Act, Canadian provincial rules, California's CCPA, and many others.
While data sovereignty has been brewing for years, its importance has surged recently, demanding attention across all digital environments and clouds. 'I've observed a marked increase in the urgency surrounding digital sovereignty, and it's impossible to ignore,' says Doug Gilbert, CIO and CDO at Sutherland Global, a digital transformation services company.