AWS European Sovereign Cloud
Built, operated, controlled, and secured in Europe
An independent cloud for Europe
The AWS European Sovereign Cloud is a new, independent cloud for Europe entirely located within the European Union (EU), designed to help customers meet their evolving sovereignty requirements.
Built in Europe for Europe, it is the only fully-featured, independently operated sovereign cloud backed by strong technical controls, sovereign assurances, and legal protections.
European-based governance and operations
The AWS European Sovereign Cloud will operate with an independent governance structure, dedicated Security Operations Centre, and under a newly established parent company that will be locally controlled in the EU, led by EU citizens and subject to local laws.
The management team of the parent company includes Stéphane Israël and Stefan Hoechbauer, both EU citizens residing in the EU and experienced business leaders, strengthening the operational autonomy of the AWS European Sovereign Cloud.
Strong sovereignty controls
The AWS European Sovereign Cloud delivers complete European control through local leadership, independent governance, and EU-based operations.
Sovereign-by-design
Our approach from the beginning has been to make AWS sovereign-by-design. We built data protection features and controls in the AWS Cloud with input from financial services, healthcare, and government customers—who are among the most security- and data privacy-conscious organisations in the world.
AWS Nitro System
Our AWS Regions are powered by the AWS Nitro System which provides a strong physical and logical security boundary to enforce access restrictions so that nobody, including AWS employees, can access customer workloads or data running on Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2). The security design of the Nitro System has been validated by the NCC Group, an independent cybersecurity firm.
Encryption
We offer features and controls to encrypt data, whether in transit, at rest, or in memory. All AWS services support encryption, and most services also support encryption with customer managed keys that AWS can’t access.
Security
Security is foundational to digital sovereignty. AWS is architected to be the most secure global cloud infrastructure on which to build, migrate, and manage applications and workloads.
Frequently Asked Questions
Key questions about the AWS European Sovereign Cloud
The AWS European Sovereign Cloud is an independent cloud for Europe, designed to help public sector organisations and customers in highly regulated industries meet their evolving sovereignty needs. The AWS European Sovereign Cloud is the only fully-featured, independently operated sovereign cloud, backed by strong technical controls, sovereign assurances and legal protections. We’ve designed the AWS European Sovereign Cloud to be separate and independent from our existing AWS Regions, with infrastructure located wholly within the European Union (EU), with the same security, availability and performance that our customers get from existing AWS Regions today. As with all current Regions, customers using the AWS European Sovereign Cloud will benefit from the full power of AWS with the same familiar architecture, expansive service portfolio and APIs that millions of customers use today.
To deliver enhanced operational autonomy and resilience within the EU, only personnel who are EU residents, located in the EU, have control of day-to-day operations, including access to the data centres, technical support and customer service of the AWS European Sovereign Cloud. We are gradually transitioning the AWS European Sovereign Cloud to be operated exclusively by EU citizens located in the EU. During this transition period we will continue to work with a blended team of EU residents and EU citizens located in the EU.
The first AWS Region of the AWS European Sovereign Cloud is located in the State of Brandenburg, Germany. We have also announced plans to extend the AWS European Sovereign Cloud footprint from Germany across the EU to support stringent isolation, in-country data residency, and low latency requirements. This will start with new AWS Local Zones located in Belgium, the Netherlands, and Portugal.
The AWS European Sovereign Cloud is open to all customers, including customers who, due to seeking enhanced data residency and operational autonomy, have either not been able to begin their cloud journey yet or not been able to move some of their more sensitive workloads to the clouds.
The AWS European Sovereign Cloud infrastructure is entirely located within the EU, physically and logically separate from other AWS Regions, and operates as an independent cloud for Europe. AWS is committed to independent and continuous operations; the AWS European Sovereign Cloud has no critical dependencies on non-EU infrastructure.
In addition to independent infrastructure, there is zero operational access outside of EU borders, providing operational autonomy and enhanced data residency. The AWS European Sovereign Cloud is operated entirely by EU residents, located in the EU. We are gradually transitioning the AWS European Sovereign Cloud to be operated exclusively by EU citizens located in the EU. Only AWS employees, residing in the EU, will control day-to-day operations, including access to data centres, technical support and customer service for the AWS European Sovereign Cloud.
The AWS European Sovereign Cloud is a fully-featured cloud offering the expansive service portfolio and capabilities that customers use across AWS today. When launching a new AWS Region, we start with core services needed to support critical workloads and applications, then continue to expand based on customer and partner demand.
Visit AWS Capabilities by Region for the complete list of available services in the AWS European Sovereign Cloud and our services roadmap.
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