GCC Data Residency & Data Sovereignty

A technical, regulatory, and architecture-level evaluation of your cloud environment to ensure full alignment with GCC data residency and sovereignty requirements.

Service Overview

Data residency is the #1 regulatory priority across the GCC, driven by sectoral mandates from:

  • Saudi Arabia: NCA-ECC, SAMA Cybersecurity Framework, PDPL

  • UAE: NESA, DESC, TDRA, Abu Dhabi ADHICS

  • Qatar: National Information Assurance & NDSP

  • Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman: national cloud and data protection laws

Global organizations operating in or expanding into the GCC must ensure that:

  • data, logs, backups, and metadata remain in-region

  • disaster recovery environments meet in-country constraints

  • encryption keys stay within national borders

  • cloud services use approved GCC regions

  • cross-border transfers follow local PDPL requirements

Our GCC Data Residency & Sovereignty Consulting Service provides a complete assessment

and practical implementation guidance to help your cloud, security, and compliance teams achieve in-region compliance.

What’s Included in This Service

  • We determine which residency rules apply to your business based on:

    • sector (banking, government, telecom, energy, healthcare, fintech)

    • data categories (personal, financial, critical, operational)

    • cloud providers and regions used

    • cross-border data flows

    • vendor contracts and hyperscaler terms

    You receive a clear regulatory map covering:
    NCA-ECC, SAMA, PDPL, NESA, DESC, Qatar NDSP Abu Dhabi ADHICS.

  • A technical review of where your data, logs, and backups actually reside across:

    • AWS (me-south-1, me-central-1)

    • Azure (uaenorth/uaecentral, qatarcentral)

    • GCP (Doha, Dammam)

    • Oracle Cloud (Dubai, Jeddah)

    We assess:

    • storage location (S3/Blob/GCS/OCI)

    • log retention / log residency paths

    • backup and snapshot residency

    • metadata exposure

    • encryption key residency

    • DR region usage

    • multi-cloud movement

  • We identify all data movement patterns that may violate GCC requirements:

    • API calls to out-of-region services

    • external integrations

    • SaaS dependencies

    • telemetry export

    • DR/HA across non-GCC regions

    • CSP-managed services hosted outside GCC

    You receive a transfer violation report:

    • critical violations

    • medium violations

    • acceptable transfers with controls

  • We assess:

    • whether your current architecture aligns with local residency rules

    • whether alternative designs better support in-country workloads

    • what changes are required to meet sectoral expectations
      (especially in banking, government, telecom, and regulated industries)

  • We evaluate your environment

    • Primary data location restriction

    • Backup and DR residency

    • Log and metadata residency

    • Key residency

    • Cross-border prevention

    • Data location monitoring

    • Provider contract residency clauses

    • Data inventory and classification

  • We check the completeness of your residency evidence, including:

    • data flow diagrams

    • data inventory

    • residency documentation

  • You receive a clear implementation roadmap with:

    • required cloud configuration changes

    • architecture adjustments

    • policy updates

    • residency evidence requirements

    • regulator-aligned documentation

    • recommended DR and backup region strategy

    • contract updates with cloud providers

    • monitoring & alerting for data location violations

    The roadmap includes 30/60/90-day steps.

Why Companies Choose This Service:

We give you absolute clarity.

  • GCC residency rules are stricter than the EU

  • Fines, license risk, and regulator escalation are real

  • Cloud architectures often violate residency rules without realizing

  • PDPL cross-border restrictions require strong documentation

  • DR locations commonly cause hidden non-compliance

  • Banks, fintechs, telecoms, and government-facing companies face zero tolerance

This is your complete GCC Data Sovereignty/Residency Service.

✅ Not just advice. Not just documentation.

Actual code, scripts, and procedures your team can execute immediately.

Check GCC Compliance Readiness