The growing demand for digital sovereignty is reshaping the technology landscape. While geopolitical shifts are accelerating this trend, broader forces are at play:
- Rising cyber threats and the growing power of state-backed actors
- Stricter regulatory frameworks (GDPR, NIS2, DORA) demanding greater accountability
- Corporate demand for trusted, sovereign supply chains
- The urgent need for resilience in digital infrastructure — in an increasingly fragmented yet digitally connected world
Together, these forces are pushing governments, critical industries, and enterprises to seek greater control — over data, keys, infrastructure, and identity.
Microsoft’s latest moves make one thing clear: digital sovereignty is no longer optional — it is becoming a market and regulatory necessity.
Microsoft’s Sovereign Cloud: A Step Forward
The company recently announced four significant enhancements to its European Sovereign Cloud offering:
- Data Guardian
Ensures all remote access to European-stored data is controlled and monitored by European-based personnel, with full real-time auditing. - External Key Management
Allows customers to control encryption keys using their own Hardware Security Modules (HSMs), on-premises or via trusted partners. - Regulated Environment Management
Offers a unified interface to configure, deploy, and monitor sovereign and regulated workloads across Azure. - Microsoft 365 Local
Enables organisations to run core Microsoft 365 services (Exchange, SharePoint) entirely within sovereign or customer-controlled environments.
These are meaningful enhancements — reflecting a clear market shift: digital sovereignty is now a primary design consideration for modern cloud and infrastructure services.
But Sovereign Data Control Isn’t Enough
While these enhancements improve encryption and operational control, they leave one foundational question unanswered:
Who governs the trust layer beneath all of this — the Public Key Infrastructure (PKI)?
Encryption keys are critical, but true digital sovereignty requires control over the entire trust chain — starting at the Root Certificate Authority (Root CA).
The Deeper Layer of Sovereignty: PKI and the Trust Chain
At the heart of every secure digital service — from identity to encryption to authentication — lies PKI. Whether it’s public PKI (used for web, IoT, digital IDs) or private PKI (used for internal networks, SCADA systems, OT, and zero-trust architectures), the trust chain must be sovereign.
The Trust Chain Determines Control
Ask these critical questions:
- Who can issue certificates?
- Who controls certificate revocation?
- Under what jurisdiction does the Root CA operate?
If a Root CA is compromised or revoked, all dependent services and digital identities can collapse. Control over the Root CA means control over:
✅ The ability to issue digital identities
✅ The ability to revoke trust instantly (and notify who needs to know)
✅ The compliance model for the entire ecosystem
✅ The ecosystem’s resilience to external political or legal interference
Without Sovereign PKI, There Is No Sovereign Infrastructure
No matter how secure your key storage is — or how comprehensive your audit controls are — if the Root CA is not sovereign, then neither is your PKI.
An ecosystem’s security is only as strong as its trust anchor.
Looking Ahead: PKI as the Next Frontier of Sovereignty
Organisations — especially in government, finance, critical infrastructure, and regulated sectors — need to take a more comprehensive view of digital trust:
- Not just where encryption keys are stored
- But who controls the entire certificate lifecycle — issuance, governance, and revocation
- And under what legal, geopolitical, and jurisdictional conditions that control operates
The future of digital identity will be sovereign by design.
Microsoft’s recent moves are a welcome and necessary step, but they also serve to underscore how much more must be done.
To achieve true sovereignty in the digital era, organisations must look beyond encryption — and take control of the trust infrastructure itself.
