The physical or geographic location of an organization’s data or information. Data residency also refers to the legal or regulatory requirements imposed on data based on the country or region in which it resides. Cloud computing, which allows organizations to deliver hosted services over the Internet, can create data residency concerns. Users need to know where their cloud provider’s data centres are located across the globe as well as the different data residency policies for each respective location. To protect data from unwanted access regardless of its geographic location, organizations can use cloud data encryption tools that transform user data into ciphertext before it is stored in the cloud (e.g., CipherCloud; Vormetric; Perspecsys).
