🛡️ 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
- Q: Does self-hosting automatically make me GDPR compliant?
- A: No. It solves Residency (Location), but you still need to handle Processing (Encryption, Access Control, Deletion Rights).
- Q: Why not just use US Cloud Act?
- A: The US Cloud Act allows US law enforcement to access data stored by US companies abroad. Many EU entities view this as a violation of GDPR, pushing them toward "Sovereign Cloud" solutions.