As governments at present have a look at know-how innovation, there’s a want to deal with the quickly evolving calls for of their residents whereas defending probably the most delicate knowledge and delivering on guarantees of belief and safety. Modernization of presidency providers with out compromising safety, digitization of guide processes and improved consumer experiences for each residents and authorities workers are all advantages of digital transformation, and the precise know-how platforms can create even higher alternatives for social and financial development.
The cloud can supply agility and suppleness, superior cybersecurity options, and entry to the newest improvements, together with AI, to speed up digital transformation and the supply of important public providers. Many governments need to reap the benefits of the advantages of the general public cloud whereas additionally managing their knowledge in accordance with their native insurance policies and regulatory necessities. They want options that guarantee digital sovereignty, giving them management over their knowledge within the cloud. In July of final 12 months, we introduced Microsoft Cloud for Sovereignty, a brand new answer that may allow governments to construct and digitally rework workloads within the Microsoft cloud whereas serving to to fulfill a lot of their particular compliance, safety and coverage necessities. Microsoft Cloud for Sovereignty creates software program boundaries within the cloud to determine the additional safety that governments require, leveraging hardware-based confidentiality and encryption controls.
Since then, we now have engaged with quite a few authorities leaders, policymakers and public sector organizations in Europe and the remainder of the world about why the cloud is the perfect answer for sovereignty wants. We have delivered two Microsoft Cloud for Sovereignty non-public preview releases that validated the ability and scale of the cloud with adherence to authorities necessities and empowered authorities clients with the digital transformation they’re striving for. It additionally helped establish three key obstacles impeding governments from assembly their digital transformation and innovation targets: Complying with legislative and regulatory necessities; defending and securing delicate knowledge; and innovating with out compromise.
Comply with legislative and regulatory necessities
Before benefiting from the numerous advantages of the cloud, authorities policymakers need to believe within the safety and privateness of their knowledge and the power to maintain innovating whereas defending that knowledge. A key component of that is assembly their legislative or regulatory obligations. This is the place Microsoft’s transparency commitments are available in.
Many governments require transparency relating to how Microsoft responds to third-party knowledge requests. At the core of our enterprise, we adhere to the next insurance policies throughout our providers and commit this to our clients:
As all main cloud service suppliers function globally, governments usually surprise how laws such because the U.S. CLOUD Act impacts cloud suppliers. This legislation doesn’t change any of the authorized and privateness protections. Microsoft adheres to the identical ideas and buyer commitments for government calls for for consumer knowledge.
Microsoft’s semi-annual legislation enforcement request report, a part of our transparency measures, reveals that the overwhelming majority of our clients are by no means impacted by authorities requests for knowledge. For instance, within the first half of 2022, Microsoft acquired 41 authorized calls for from legislation enforcement within the United States for business, instructional, and public sector clients who bought greater than 50 seats. Of these calls for, there have been no disclosures of content material knowledge associated to a non-U.S. buyer whose knowledge was saved outdoors of the United States.
With Microsoft Cloud for Sovereignty, we offer extra sovereign guardrails that assist guarantee knowledge is protected in transit and in storage by customer-owned keys not accessible to Microsoft and guarded in use when utilizing Azure confidential computing, delivering unmatched software program and {hardware} protections such that solely clients with the correct keys can entry the information when unencrypted.
Ability to guard and safe delicate knowledge
With the speedy will increase in quantity, severity, and class of cyberattacks, it’s more and more clear that the cloud is the easiest way to guard knowledge. The cloud supplies authorities clients with world-class safety and unmatched sources and scale to detect, reply and deter assaults early on.
Microsoft Cloud and Azure are trusted by tens of millions of consumers with their most delicate and mission-critical workloads. We supply all kinds of instruments to watch and reply to safety threats, in addition to specialised providers to assist governments maintain their knowledge secure. With greater than 8,500 Microsoft safety consultants throughout 77 international locations, we now have helped present a crucial perspective on the safety panorama and are constantly fine-tuning our safety approaches as we be taught from every cyberattack. With the addition of the Microsoft Cloud for Sovereignty, authorities clients can set up their very own software program boundary within the cloud whereas taking full benefit of Azure’s best-in-class safety, resilience and scale capabilities. Microsoft Cloud for Sovereignty permits clients to leverage key Azure capabilities together with:
- Microsoft’s Azure Key Vault Managed Hardware Security Module permits clients to keep full management of the cryptographic key, whereas nonetheless benefiting from the redundancy, resilience, cybersecurity and managed expertise of the cloud.
- Azure confidential computing is a novel service that protects knowledge in use and permits the information to be processed solely after the cloud atmosphere is verified to be a trusted execution atmosphere. In this manner, confidential computing helps shield knowledge from being accessed by cloud operators, malicious admins, and even privileged software program such because the hypervisor. It helps maintain knowledge protected all through its lifecycle — along with present options of defending knowledge at relaxation and in transit, knowledge is now protected whereas in use. In Azure, the basis of belief is with impartial {hardware}, so even Microsoft operators can not entry the reminiscence encryption keys. This impartial {hardware} root belief is what helps authorities clients to independently cryptographically confirm the id and “known good state” of the cloud working atmosphere they’re counting on.
With Microsoft, governments can reap the benefits of our view of the evolving menace panorama. With industry-leading AI, we synthesize 65 trillion security indicators a day throughout all varieties of gadgets, apps, platforms and endpoints, which is an eight occasions improve from the 8 trillion every day indicators captured simply two years in the past. And we apply the learnings from that sign intelligence, in addition to from our world-class menace intelligence, into all of the services and products we provide. Furthermore, we now have greater than 15,000 companions working with us throughout our safety ecosystem, serving to to carry higher options and extra decisions to the market. Our international menace intelligence perspective allows early detection and response to rising threats throughout multi-cloud, hybrid, on-premises and heterogeneous platforms.
Innovation with out compromise
Embracing digital innovation whereas guaranteeing digital sovereignty is a problem for governments. Investing in a personal, remoted on-premises datacenter may, at face worth, appear to be the one approach to obtain the extent of management and safety a authorities requires. But constructing on a personal cloud requires sustaining on-premises datacenters, that are not viable as a result of their lack of ability to scale and ship the safety and performance that the cloud supplies. Finally, we additionally hear from our clients that they’re working below more and more restrained sources and shrinking budgets. The cloud gives governments the power to function on a lean funds, in comparison with on-premises. Migrating to the cloud can allow governments to reap the benefits of the agile advantages of the cloud and focus their spending on the newest improvements within the supply of providers.
As applied sciences advance, they’re taken to the cloud first. Governments that undertake the cloud profit from the newest improvements altering how governments function, together with AI, blockchain, digital id and on-line providers, whereas people who keep or develop their non-public cloud investments might not profit from the identical development and innovation.
Innovating whereas assembly digital sovereignty necessities is advanced and may differ enormously between clients, industries and geographies. We imagine a cloud answer designed to deal with sovereignty must have superior capabilities constructed with the wants of presidency clients in thoughts and have to be customizable and versatile to stick to evolving native insurance policies and regulatory necessities across the dealing with of knowledge.
Now for the primary time, governments will not be pressured to decide on between digital innovation and knowledge management; they’ll have each. With Microsoft Cloud for Sovereignty, we’re investing additional in guardrails akin to Sovereign Landing Zones, native coverage packs and elevated transparency all through Azure, making a digital sovereign cloud atmosphere for buyer workloads. This helps allow clients to reap the benefits of greatest practices and implement safe, constant and compliant environments and cling to evolving native laws whereas taking full benefit of the cloud.
Ensuring compliance and driving digital transformation
The public sector will at all times want to guard and safe delicate knowledge, adjust to legislative and regulatory necessities and innovate with out compromise. At Microsoft, we try to fulfill these wants by offering clients with transparency and unsurpassed knowledge controls, investing in cybersecurity and collaborating with governments worldwide to fulfill their coverage and regulatory wants.
It is not essential for governments to decide on between innovation and digital sovereignty. Governments can now harness the total energy of the cloud, together with broad platform capabilities, whereas having larger management over their knowledge and elevated transparency to the operational and governance processes of the cloud — permitting governments to make sure compliance whereas driving their digital transformation.
For extra data, please go to microsoft.com/sovereignty.