Some 88% of enterprise leaders believe a data sovereignty failure could cost them their jobs, research from storage and data management supplier Everpure has found.
The Global data sovereignty report 2026, released at Everpure’s Accelerate event in London this week, drew on a Vanson Bourne survey of 2,100 C-suite and IT leaders across the UK, France, Germany, Australia, Japan, South Korea, Singapore and India in June. It found 91% worry about financial and reputational damage, but 64% of organisations operate without a formal data sovereignty strategy.
The report frames the result as a “sovereignty gap” – executive recognition of risk running far ahead of operational readiness. Some 90% of organisations recognise data sovereignty as a business concern, but 62% lack visibility into who can access, control and manage their data. Everpure said many also focus on the wrong risks: 47% cite cyber security as a leading driver, while only 26% flag service disruption from political uncertainty and 9% prioritise protection from extraterritorial data access.
Alex McMullan, Everpure’s chief technology officer for international, said: “Senior leaders understand their jobs are on the line over data sovereignty, yet many are still focused on the wrong risks. Sovereignty is not simply about where data is stored, but having full visibility and control over it through modern data management. Who can access data, which jurisdictions apply and whether business-critical data or services could be disrupted are key questions every organisation should be asking.”
Everpure calls the answer “sovereignty by design” – a shift from national to corporate sovereignty and applying controls according to the risk profile of each dataset, application and workload. Patrick Smith, Everpure’s chief technology officer, said: “Our recommendation is to embrace a sovereignty by design approach – dealing with sovereignty from an overall strategic view, not a tactical view.”
Everpure said its Data Intelligence software supports the model by discovering, classifying and contextualising enterprise data across its platform, public clouds, software-as-a-service (SaaS) applications and third-party storage. That, it argued, gives organisations the visibility to decide how data should be governed and protected, rather than treating sovereignty as a routine cyber security or compliance exercise. Everpure said a third of organisations now tie sovereignty to their artificial intelligence (AI) initiatives, making data control a precondition for adoption rather than an afterthought.
Rahiel Nasir, research director and lead analyst for worldwide digital sovereignty at IDC, said the issue has become a board-level concern: “Digital sovereignty has moved from a compliance conversation to a critical board-level concern. The challenge for executives is not just about knowing where their data is hosted. It is about being in total control of all data access and transfers, including all metadata.”
Everpure said the findings show sovereignty has shifted from a compliance cost to a question of resilience and competitive advantage, as geopolitical uncertainty and the push to adopt AI raise the stakes for where and how data is stored, processed and accessed.