New global research from Everpure has found that 88% of large enterprise C-suite leaders believe a data sovereignty failure could cost them their jobs, and that 91% worry about financial and reputational damage to their organisation, the company said. The research, commissioned from Vanson Bourne, surveyed 2,100 C-suite and IT leaders at large enterprises in the UK, France, Germany, Australia, Japan, South Korea, Singapore and India in June 2026.
Even so, 64% of organisations operate without a formal data sovereignty strategy in place, the findings show. According to the company, 62% lack full visibility into who can access, control and manage their data, 56% have no mitigation plans for geopolitical data exfiltration or service disruption, 56% say they lack the skills and capacity to deliver sovereignty initiatives, and 36% are facing challenges with executive buy-in. Only 9% say protection from extraterritorial data access is a top priority.
The Global Data Sovereignty Report 2026 also found that 90% of organisations recognise data sovereignty as a business concern, that 85% are willing to compromise on advanced features and functionality to work with a local or sovereign provider, and that 40% are already limiting their use of SaaS providers reliant on non-domestic infrastructure.
Everpure described the results as a "sovereignty gap" between executive recognition of risk and operational readiness. Alex McMullan, the company's Chief Technology Officer, International, said senior leaders understand their jobs are on the line yet many remain focused on the wrong risks, and that sovereignty is about having full visibility and control over data rather than simply where it is stored. Rahiel Nasir, Research Director and Lead Analyst, Worldwide Digital Sovereignty at IDC, said digital sovereignty has moved from a compliance conversation to a critical board-level concern.
Everpure recommends an approach it calls sovereignty by design, in which controls and governance are applied according to the risk of each data set, application and workload. The company said its Data Intelligence product supports that model by discovering, classifying and contextualising enterprise data across its platform, public clouds, SaaS applications and third-party storage.
