CIOInsider India Magazine
Beyond Data Residency: Call for Cloud Sovereignty in India
Vishant possesses over 15 years of strong professional experience in security, compliance, risk, and privacy among others. Currently, he leads the product journey for industry-specific public clouds at NxtGen Cloud Technologies. He places great emphasis on safety and reliablity, especially when building cloud solutions from scratch—solutions that can really make a difference for whole industries. Leaning on his security roots, Vishant believes that there is much to create when you bring new perspectives to the table.
The "Mumbai Mirage": Beyond Data Residency
The scenario is all too common - a CTO proudly showcases screenshots of a major cloud console with "Mumbai" selected as the region, assuring the board that all data resides in India. Yet, beneath this reassuring surface lies a complex web of control plane operations that often extend far beyond Indian shores.
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Major cloud providers, while offering Indian regions, may still route critical control-plane calls to global or default endpoints. For example, some services might default to US-East (N. Virginia) if regional endpoints are not explicitly enforced. This isn't just about minor telemetry but involves sensitive management traffic and operational data. Even when regionalization is possible, vendors often recommend global endpoints for services like the Security Token Service (STS), impacting both resiliency and jurisdiction. This matters because control APIs manage identity, orchestration, metadata, and billing. If these functions operate outside India, the "Indian" cloud environment is exposed to foreign risks and an extended legal surface area.
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Global Identity, Local Data
The issue of sovereignty deepens when considering identity and operational metadata. Even when application data is stored in Mumbai, the infrastructure for authentication and system operations can have a global footprint.
Microsoft's documentation states that Microsoft Entra Domain Services stores "system metadata globally in Azure Tables." Similarly, Google Cloud notes that "Service Data may be processed on servers located outside of the country, by centralized operations like billing, support, and security." This "control-plane exhaust" can create a
gap in data sovereignty for regulated Indian entities, as auditors scrutinize these details.
Jurisdiction is a Feature, Not a Bug
The legal frameworks governing cloud providers are a critical, often overlooked, aspect of sovereignty. If a provider (or its parent company) operates under US law, the CLOUD Act empowers US authoritie to compel the disclosure of data in its possession, custody, or control, regardless of where that data is stored. This includes operational and metadata if the provider has control over it.
This goes beyond mere compliance; it's about fortifying national digital infrastructure in an increasingly intricate global landscape.
To better understand this, imagine a simple model: The data plane is where the actual information lives – the virtual computers, databases, and files, ideally located within one's own country, say Mumbai. The control plane, however, refers to the "master switches" that create, move, back up, and monitor these resources. These crucial controls are often not in the same location as the data. A real-world example of this problem occurs when a major cloud region, like US-East-1, experiences an outage. Its impact isn't limited to that region; it can affect global monitoring systems and identity checks, a common phenomenon that even vendors acknowledge, advising customers to keep the control points localized.
Consider India as a prime example. To achieve genuine data sovereignty within India's banking and financial services (BFSI) sector, the entire control plane needs to be situated within the country. This entails an operating model where all critical infrastructure components—identity management, compute scheduling, network control, and storage services—are deployed on national soil. These components should be managed by local teams and adhere to national auditing standards. This isn't merely a theoretical ideal; it's achievable through architectural designs that allow the core cloud management systems to be deployed precisely where needed, with verifiable local presence.
Keys: The Ultimate Sovereignty Litmus Test
The ultimate safeguard of data sovereignty rests with the custody of encryption keys. If an external entity can surreptitiously access sensitive data, then true sovereignty remains elusive. Therefore, it's paramount that organizations retain ownership of their encryption keys, ideally backed by specialized hardware security modules (HSMs) located within the country.
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With this architecture, even if a cloud provider gains access to encrypted data, decryption remains impossible. In anticipation of the future of cryptography, including the adoption of post-quantum encryption standards, it is essential to prepare accordingly. By aligning key management roadmaps, organizations can ensure that custody models evolve seamlessly without compromising control over the fundamental keys to data security.
Bottom Line
The term "region" in cloud computing can often be a marketing construct. Sovereignty, however, is an operating model. For any nation, especially in critical sectors, it demands that the "control room" of their digital infrastructure is within their borders, that they hold the ultimate encryption keys, and that all digital activities are transparent and verifiable by national authorities. This goes beyond mere compliance; it's about fortifying national digital infrastructure in an increasingly intricate global landscape.
