Amazon is introducing a separate cloud service for Europe to address the stricter regulations that companies and public sector organizations face in the European Union.
Amazon Web Services (AWS) announced on Wednesday that the AWS European Sovereign Cloud will be located and operated in Europe. It will offer the same level of security, availability, and performance as existing AWS regions but will be separate from them. With this cloud service, customers can keep all the metadata they create within the European Union, and it will have its own billing and usage metering systems.
“The AWS European Sovereign Cloud reinforces our commitment to offering AWS customers the most advanced set of sovereignty controls, privacy safeguards, and security features available in the cloud,” said Max Peterson, Vice President of Sovereign Cloud at AWS.
Data protection across the Atlantic has been a growing concern since the European Union’s top court invalidated a data sharing agreement called Privacy Shield in 2020. The court ruled that the agreement, which allowed businesses to transfer data to the U.S. under the EU’s strict data privacy rules, was not sufficient in preventing the U.S. government from accessing user data. In 2021, Microsoft announced that it would enable business and public sector customers in the European Union to keep their cloud computing data within the 27-nation bloc to address concerns about U.S. government access to sensitive information.
Amazon’s AWS supports 143 security standards and compliance certifications, helping customers meet regulatory requirements. The company is working with European regulators and national cybersecurity agencies to build the AWS European Sovereign Cloud, ensuring it meets additional needs for data residency, operational autonomy, and resiliency in Europe.
Germany will be the first AWS Region within the AWS European Sovereign Cloud, and it will be available to all European customers. Only EU-resident AWS employees located in the EU will have control over the operations and support for the AWS European Sovereign Cloud.
“The development of a European AWS cloud will make it much easier for many public sector organizations and companies with high data security and data protection requirements to use AWS services,” said Claudia Plattner, President of the German Federal Office for Information Security.
