As I’m off for a couple of days, I wrote this on Tuesday, so who knows what’s going on with the Russia-Ukraine situation by then. Regardless, I’ve been meaning to cover this post by Rob Robinson and his excellent ComplexDiscovery site regarding data embassies – not surprisingly in these days of chronic cyberattacks, they have become important to ensure a government’s digital continuity.
As Rob notes in his article here, data embassies are an innovative approach to the digital continuity of nation-states as they serve as extensions of a nation-state’s cloud through state-owned server resources outside of the nation-state’s physical territorial boundaries. The data embassy approach is unique as nation-states historically have stored their information within their physical territorial boundaries.
This recent approach provides the capability for a nation-state to host data and service resources in a secure data center outside its physical territorial borders and operate those resources in times of crisis ranging from large-scale cyberattacks to military invasions by hostile nation-states. This approach is also designed to provide sovereignty, security, and continuity for nation-states in situations where the operation of hosted data and service resources inside physical territorial boundaries is diminished, denied, or destroyed. By having an established data embassy, a nation-state can expatriate government-critical data and services to a diplomatically-secure location, enabling continuity of government with the protections of immunity and inviolability.
Rob then proceeds to provide a “non-all-inclusive” (but terrific) compilation of informational articles, agreements, and reports that may be helpful for those seeking to learn more about the concept of data embassies and the sovereignty, security, and continuity implications of data embassies for cybersecurity, information governance, and legal discovery professionals.
With tensions escalating between Russia and Ukraine, the NotPetya attack launched by Russian military against Ukraine in 2017 and another cyberattack launched on about 70 Ukrainian government websites in January, data embassies may become more important than real embassies! Check out Rob’s article here, but before you do, see if you can guess the country that opened the world’s first Data Embassy!
So, what do you think? What other trends will result from increased cyberattacks? Please share any comments you might have or if you’d like to know more about a particular topic.
Disclaimer: The views represented herein are exclusively the views of the author, and do not necessarily represent the views held by my employer, my partners or my clients. eDiscovery Today is made available solely for educational purposes to provide general information about general eDiscovery principles and not to provide specific legal advice applicable to any particular circumstance. eDiscovery Today should not be used as a substitute for competent legal advice from a lawyer you have retained and who has agreed to represent you.
