🛡️ RISK BADGE: 🇪🇺 COMPLIANCE
Executive Summary: What is it?
Data Residency refers to the physical geographic location where your data is stored. Laws like GDPR (Europe) and CCPA (California) often mandate that citizen data must strictly be stored/processed within their borders or in countries with adequate protection.
CFO / Business Impact: What does it cost/risk?
Legal Fines & Market Access. If you use a US-based Managed SaaS, your data is likely in Virginia (US-East-1). This may violate GDPR for EU customers. Self-hosting allows you to choose the exact data center (e.g., AWS Frankfurt or Hetzner Germany).
Technical Reality: How does it work?
In Self-Hosting, you pick the server region. In SaaS, you are at the mercy of the vendor's cloud provider.
💡 Executive FAQ
- Question: Does self-hosting automatically ensure GDPR compliance?
- Answer: No. It solves residency (physical location), but you still must manage processing standards, encryption, and access controls.
- Question: What is the "Cloud Act" risk?
- Answer: Certain legal frameworks allow foreign law enforcement to access data stored by providers under their jurisdiction, regardless of physical location. Self-hosting with local providers mitigates this risk.