Data Residency

Data Residency is the geographical location or region in which data is stored and, where applicable, processed. In cloud and SaaS models, this can be a specific country, the European Union or a defined data center region, for example. The term is particularly relevant when contracts, internal policies or regulatory requirements specify concrete requirements for the storage location.

For organizations, it is not enough to consider only the primary storage location. Backups, replicas, log data, support access and subcontractors can also influence the regions in which data is actually processed. Structured Data Management helps to make such data flows and responsibilities transparent.

Data residency is not synonymous with data sovereignty. While residency describes the physical or regional storage and processing location, sovereignty additionally encompasses control, access rights and legal influence. Both aspects should therefore be considered together with Governance and Security.