By Michael Langer-Monsalve, Director of Technology
Data is the means of most modern systems and it includes all the information that flows in the background that, to a large extent, we don’t see. Without data, the majority of modern businesses cannot function to their potential.
When it comes to data, security is a major topic, not only in the sense of keeping data safe from external attacks but also who has the right to access that data. In this short post, we would like to talk about the physical location where data is stored because this is a crucial point that is commonly overlooked.
Most modern countries and economic blocks have a law or regulation like GDPR that specifies how to manage sensitive or personal data, but it’s also the responsibility of companies that store and process that data to have solid data protection policies. That brings us to the concept of data residency, which is the physical and geographical location of an organisation’s data. In some countries, it’s mandatory to keep some or all data within the country’s boundaries. This means that companies that gather, process, and store data need to have access to a data centre in that region. A case in point is Germany, where the main data storage is required to stay inside the boundaries of the country, but backups and redundant infrastructure can be held in other EU regions.
Why is that so important? In a hypothetical case, a local authority could request access to the data stored in their jurisdiction in a court of law, even if that data was not gathered in that region.
When it comes to such a vital resource as data, Customs4trade takes special care. We take your data very seriously, not only with regards to how, but also where, we store it. We offer our customers the option to choose in which regions they want their data to be stored and which regions are not acceptable for them. When designing our architecture, we took this requirement to heart. All this is possible because we run our systems on Microsoft Azure, a modern cloud infrastructure, which requires very little intervention from our system administrators.
This article is part of a series of articles where we’ll show you how we are transforming our business. Keep an eye on our Inspire blog to learn more about topics such as how the cloud is changing technology design, compliance, and how important timing is when setting up a (start-up) solution.