Microsoft Promises to Keep European Cloud Data in Europe

Microsoft unveiled a European “Sovereign Cloud” package designed to keep EU customer data stored, processed, and accessed within Europe, featuring Sovereign Public and Private Clouds, National Partner Clouds, the Data Guardian approval/monitoring layer for engineer access, and support for customer-managed encryption keys via HSM. The company reiterated it would contest any foreign orders to disrupt European cloud operations. Critics questioned whether U.S. legal authority could still compel surveillance or backdoors despite these assurances.