Everpure survey: 88% of executives worry knowledge sovereignty failures
Some 88% of enterprise leaders imagine a knowledge sovereignty failure may value them their jobs, analysis from storage and knowledge administration provider Everpure has discovered.
The International knowledge sovereignty report 2026, launched at Everpure’s Speed up occasion in London this week, drew on a Vanson Bourne survey of two,100 C-suite and IT leaders throughout the UK, France, Germany, Australia, Japan, South Korea, Singapore and India in June. It discovered 91% fear about monetary and reputational injury, however 64% of organisations function with out a formal knowledge sovereignty technique.
The report frames the outcome as a “sovereignty hole” – govt recognition of danger working far forward of operational readiness. Some 90% of organisations recognise knowledge sovereignty as a enterprise concern, however 62% lack visibility into who can entry, management and handle their knowledge. Everpure stated many additionally give attention to the flawed dangers: 47% cite cyber safety as a number one driver, whereas solely 26% flag service disruption from political uncertainty and 9% prioritise safety from extraterritorial knowledge entry.
Alex McMullan, Everpure’s chief expertise officer for worldwide, stated: “Senior leaders perceive their jobs are on the road over knowledge sovereignty, but many are nonetheless centered on the flawed dangers. Sovereignty isn’t merely about the place knowledge is saved, however having full visibility and management over it by way of fashionable knowledge administration. Who can entry knowledge, which jurisdictions apply and whether or not business-critical knowledge or companies could possibly be disrupted are key questions each organisation must be asking.”
Everpure calls the reply “sovereignty by design” – a shift from nationwide to company sovereignty and making use of controls in accordance with the danger profile of every dataset, utility and workload. Patrick Smith, Everpure’s chief expertise officer, stated: “Our suggestion is to embrace a sovereignty by design strategy – coping with sovereignty from an general strategic view, not a tactical view.”
Everpure stated its Information Intelligence software program helps the mannequin by discovering, classifying and contextualising enterprise knowledge throughout its platform, public clouds, software-as-a-service (SaaS) functions and third-party storage. That, it argued, offers organisations the visibility to resolve how knowledge must be ruled and guarded, slightly than treating sovereignty as a routine cyber safety or compliance train. Everpure stated a 3rd of organisations now tie sovereignty to their synthetic intelligence (AI) initiatives, making knowledge management a precondition for adoption slightly than an afterthought.
Rahiel Nasir, analysis director and lead analyst for worldwide digital sovereignty at IDC, stated the difficulty has develop into a board-level concern: “Digital sovereignty has moved from a compliance dialog to a important board-level concern. The problem for executives isn’t just about understanding the place their knowledge is hosted. It’s about being in complete management of all knowledge entry and transfers, together with all metadata.”
Everpure stated the findings present sovereignty has shifted from a compliance value to a query of resilience and aggressive benefit, as geopolitical uncertainty and the push to undertake AI increase the stakes for the place and the way knowledge is saved, processed and accessed.
