Compliance Resiliency

European regulations governing data protection, cybersecurity, and operational resilience have fundamentally changed the IT landscape. GDPR, NIS-2, ISO 27001, and emerging regulations impose specific requirements—many of which cannot be satisfied by existing infrastructure. Organizations storing data on US clouds, operating without centralized access controls, or managing software licenses without discipline face significant compliance risk.

Compliance isn't merely about avoiding fines. Regulatory violations damage customer trust, trigger expensive remediation efforts, and distract leadership from business growth. Proactive compliance—addressing regulations in advance—is cheaper and builds customer confidence.

Data Sovereignty and GDPR

GDPR fundamentally requires that personal data of EU residents remains under EU legal jurisdiction. Data stored on US clouds, governed by US law and potentially subject to CLOUD Act access, violates GDPR Article 48. Organizations handling EU citizen data must migrate to European sovereign clouds—not as an option, but as a regulatory requirement.

This isn't merely a storage location decision. The cloud provider must be European, subject to EU legal jurisdiction, and unable to access customer data without court orders issued under EU law. This rules out US cloud providers and US subsidiaries of non-EU companies, regardless of where data is physically stored.

Access Control and NIS-2

The Network and Information Security Directive 2 (NIS-2) imposes mandatory access control requirements: organizations must implement centralized identity management, enforce least-privilege access, and maintain complete audit trails of all system access. For critical infrastructure operators, this is non-negotiable.

NIS-2 compliance requires more than identity and access management infrastructure—it requires demonstrating that access controls work in practice. This means regular audits, testing, and continuous monitoring.

Licensing and Operational Risk

Open-source licensing complexity creates hidden compliance risk. Many organizations unknowingly violate copyleft obligations like GPL, exposing themselves to legal action and reputational damage. Simultaneously, many organizations fail to meet attribution requirements for permissive licenses like MIT or Apache. Compliance requires discovery of all OSS components, accurate tracking through Software Bills of Materials (SBOMs), and continuous monitoring ensuring license obligations are met across the entire software supply chain.

Security Certifications as Compliance Evidence

For regulated industries, security certifications provide evidence of compliance. For example, ISO 27001 certifications demonstrate comprehensive information security management. These certifications reduce compliance audit burden and provide legal defensibility. We can support you achieving those certifications but it is an organization-wide team effort that mustn't be underestimated.

Strategic Approach

Compliance resiliency requires addressing three domains:

Data Sovereignty: Ensure EU personal data remains on European sovereign clouds, governed by EU law.

Access Governance: Implement centralized identity management, enforce least-privilege access, and maintain audit trails satisfying regulatory requirements.

License Management: Discover all software, track licenses accurately, and enforce compliance continuously.

Organizations addressing these three areas simultaneously achieve true compliance resiliency—a state where regulatory violations become nearly impossible because controls are embedded in operations.