Across global enterprises, digital sovereignty has become a defining requirement — especially as AI systems scale and supply chains grow more complex. Leaders are under pressure to show where data lives, how systems behave, and who ultimately has authority over critical workloads. Yet the visibility required to answer these questions remains elusive.

A new global study from the IBM Institute for Business Value and the Dubai Future Foundation highlights this gap: 93% of executives say sovereignty must now be factored into their business strategy. However, less than one‑third know where and what AI runs and only 18% maintain an up‑to‑date AI inventory. Organizations understand sovereignty matters, but lack the tools to oversee or prove the level of sovereignty they want to achieve.

Today, IBM Cloud is introducing IBM Cloud Sovereignty Risk Profile, a new tool designed to help give enterprises the visibility, evidence, and operational control needed to demonstrate how they are addressing digital sovereignty requirements with greater confidence. IBM Cloud Sovereignty Risk Profile is the latest capability from IBM Cloud, which has a long history of working with clients in highly regulated industries to help them responsibly manage valuable enterprise data. The new tool is also a part of IBM’s larger portfolio of digital sovereignty offerings, which includes the recent launch of IBM Sovereign Core, a new software platform designed to help organizations build and operate AI-ready sovereign environments and verify their control.

The Four Pillars of IBM Cloud’s Digital Sovereignty Strategy

IBM Cloud’s approach to digital sovereignty is built on four foundational pillars that define what sovereignty requires:

1. Provability – Ability to document compliance, not just claim it
2. Prevention – Retain exclusive control over data through encryption
3. Privacy – Choose where and how workloads run
4. Portability – Avoid lock‑in and maintain freedom of movement

Below, each pillar is expanded with clearer benefits, examples, and outcomes.

Provability: Continuous Evidence for Regulators and Stakeholders

Visibility is the foundation of sovereignty. Without it, organizations cannot demonstrate that operational controls align with legal mandates.

The new IBM Cloud Sovereignty Risk Profile is integrated into IBM’s Security and Compliance Center Workload Protection (SCC-WP), a platform designed to help clients simplify their compliance obligations, manage security and gain insights across their hybrid multi-cloud environments. With continuous monitoring to help enterprises assess that controls are operating across cloud workloads, IBM Cloud Sovereignty Risk Profile aims to give enterprises and governments a practical way to assess and measure control for a host of requirements, including data residency, encryption, resilience, concentration risk and operational independence as AI workloads scale and regulatory oversight intensifies.

Why it matters: Regulators are increasingly looking for evidence to support compliance and sovereignty claims. The capability is designed to help clients translate sovereignty requirements into measurable risk scenarios and provide them with audit‑ready evidence.

Prevention: Encryption Designed for Enterprises to Control Their Data

Clients must have full control over their data, including the ability to encrypt it using their own encryption keys and determining who can access them. For example, if an enterprise’s cloud provider can access the keys, a government order can require the provider to decrypt the data. Sovereignty requires that no cloud provider — including IBM — can access an enterprise’s data.

IBM’s Keep Your Own Key (KYOK) technology, delivered through IBM® Key Protect for IBM Cloud®, is designed to help clients maintain exclusive control over encryption keys. These keys are designed to be backed by FIPS 140‑3 Level 4 certified hardware, the highest assurance level for cryptographic protection.

Why it matters: Encryption is a technical foundation of trust and sovereignty. And clients should be the only ones with control over their encryption keys.

Privacy: Flexible Deployment Models to Help Clients Meet Requirements

IBM Cloud believes clients should have the freedom to choose platforms, locations and operational models. IBM’s enterprise-grade cloud platform is designed to give clients the flexibility they need to meet regulatory and operational requirements through a range of deployment models. These include dedicated Multizone Regions (MZRs) that operate in-region and allow for public‑cloud scale paired with private‑cloud security, single-tenant cloud environments to allow for maximum controls, and in some regions, partnerships with local operators that enable data centers to be run by local citizens to help meet strict data protection requirements.

Why it matters: Sovereignty is not about isolation; it’s about ensuring the right people, in the right jurisdiction, have the right authority.

Portability: Open Source as a Sovereignty Enabler

IBM Cloud is built on open technologies, including Red Hat OpenShift, Kubernetes, and open APIs, to help enable interoperability and workload portability across environments. This architecture helps give clients freedom to move workloads across clouds and on‑prem environments, address vendor lock‑in, and enable consistent operations across hybrid and multi‑cloud architectures.

Why it matters: Sovereignty requires the ability to choose — and change — platforms without friction.

Sovereignty Starts with Control

As organizations adopt cloud services and scale AI, questions around data sovereignty and residency become more urgent. Enterprises must expect their cloud custodians to provide them with control over data location, data access, data encryption and operational independence.

Sovereignty is an important design consideration and IBM Cloud is committed to helping clients address their unique requirements.