What Does “Digital Sovereignty” Actually Mean – In Concrete Terms?

Digital sovereignty refers to an organization’s ability to manage its digital systems, data flows, and technical dependencies in a way that remains independent, capable, and secure against market forces, infrastructure operators, and foreign legal jurisdictions.

This involves more than just data protection or hosting locations. Digital sovereignty is a combination of technical architecture, legal control, and operational self-determination.

It answers questions such as:

• Who controls my system access?
• Who operates the Control Plane of my cloud environment?
• Who can access my logs, traces, and configuration data?
• Who decides when APIs become obsolete?
• Who is capable of acting in a crisis – me, or my provider?

Digital sovereignty does not mean building everything yourself. It means being able to consciously decide at any time what you control yourself – and where you delegate responsibility.

An example: the CLOUD Act.

The US CLOUD Act requires American companies to hand over data to US authorities upon request – regardless of whether the data is stored in Europe.

For companies using services from US cloud providers, this means:

Even with hosting in Frankfurt or Paris, external access can occur – without the customer’s knowledge, without involving European authorities, without legal recourse.

This is not a question of technology, but a question of infrastructure sovereignty.

Those who do not know what dependencies exist in their architectures will not be able to react in a crisis.

Digital sovereignty requires technical clarity.

It is not enough to write terms like “EU-Cloud”, “security”, or “data protection” in tenders.

Sovereignty only arises where architecture, operations, and legal framework remain coherently controllable.

This means, for example:

• Choosing services so that they remain technically interchangeable
• Retaining control over identities, secrets, network segments, and deployments
• Ensuring operational data, logs, and monitoring do not leak to third parties
• Not delegating root access, control planes, and key material externally

How does one become digitally sovereign?

Not through certificates. Not through political initiatives. But through architecture decisions.

Those who wish to remain sovereign must understand system boundaries, clearly separate responsibilities, and be able to demonstrate at any time:

“We know who controls what and when.”

Nothing more is needed in the end. But also nothing less.