Varonis opens first UK data centre to meet data sovereignty needs

Data security firm Varonis has opened its first UK data centre to address the growing demand for data sovereignty.

The London-based data centre will help organisations keep their data in the UK, while complying with data protection laws like the Data Protection Act and GDPR.

“Our customers will be able to show that security logs and analytics related to this data are kept locally,” said Mark Wilcox, VP and General Manager for UK and Germany at Varonis.

As a result of growing security threats and data sovereignty expectations, more organisations in the UK now need to ensure that data is kept locally to whilst also adhering to international regulations if they operate in other jurisdictions like the EU.

The Government of Jersey will move its data to the new UK-hosted SaaS tenant to comply with local regulations.

“We are not just enhancing our data security and compliance, we are building on our agility in the digital landscape,” said Stuart Powell, CISO at the Government of Jersey.

Earlier this year, Varonis opened its first data centre in Australia to help customers comply with Australia’s national data sovereignty rules and the Australian Privacy Act.

What are the repercussions of data protection failures?

Companies who fail to comply with data protection regulations can be issued with hefty fines.

Facebook owner Meta was fined £1 billion (€1.2 billion) by Ireland’s Data Protection Commission (DPC) for breaching part of the European GDPR rules. The company was also ordered to stop transferring user data from European users to its US servers.

In 2021, WhatsApp failed to inform European Union citizens about how the communications firm collected, used, and shared their personal data. This resulted in the Data Protection Commission issuing the company a £211 million ($267 million) fine.

Hungry for more tech news?

Sign up for your weekly tech briefings!