Lack of full data sovereignty can seriously impact the Government of Canada (GC), Canadian citizens and third parties. Even when stored in a hyper-scale cloud provider’s data centre located on Canadian soil and marketed as a “sovereign cloud,” sensitive government data is subject to foreign laws and could be disclosed to a foreign government without notice. “Regardless of where the cloud resources are physically located, when data is stored in a cloud environment, the stored data may be subject to the laws of other countries. As previously mentioned, CSPs are hyper-scale providers that have global deployment. A CSP with foreign operations could be required to comply with a warrant, court order or subpoena request from a foreign law enforcement agency seeking to obtain GC data.” Government administrations change. What may not seem like a significant concern under one leadership, suddenly becomes dangerous a few years later when a new leader steps into power. By then, it could be too late. A rise in nationalistic populism in governments around the world mean a swing toward “country first” attitudes. As economic factors shift and trade tensions rise, even the seemingly friendliest leadership may seek out ways to gain an upper hand for the advancement of their country or agenda. For sensitive data, a false sense of sovereignty presents a very dangerous and slippery slope one that no one wants to slide down. That slope can become an avalanche under the weight of shifting politics. ThinkOn understands the critical nature of data supply chain protection for Canada’s future and is investing in research, development, and the education of skilled talent required to ensure our nation’s sensitive data stays safe. Making the Necessary Investment for Domestic Data To achieve true data sovereignty, 49 percent of IT decision-makers are using hybrid cloud or regional cloud service providers as an alternative to the public cloud. Every country needs its own sovereign cloud provider —ThinkOn is proud to be Canada’s. ThinkOn is the Canadian VMware Sovereign Cloud partner and an innovator in Canadian cloud and data security standards. We are a Canadian-owned and operated company; therefore, we have a vested interest in protecting Canadian data. ThinkOn is the only Canadian supplier with the contractual capability to sell cloud-based data management services to support both Federal Government Sensitive (PBMM) workloads as well as workloads from all other levels of public sector entities in Canada. To tackle growing data security concerns, advance research and development (R&D), and contribute to Canada’s tech talent pipeline, ThinkOn recently opened a highly secure, state-of-theart Global Security Event Operations Centre (SOC) run by an elite research and response team in partnership with Canadore College in North Bay, Ontario. Our association with Canadore is an investment in “growing our own talent,” allowing ThinkOn to offer practicum opportunities to some of the most skilled Canadian cybersecurity students— opportunities that will directly contribute to the future of the Canadian technology industry. ThinkOn has also created a Digital Evidence Management (DEM) archive and established a new Digital Public Safety (DPS) R&D team for video storage and analytics—one of the fastest growing data markets. The DEM archive will provide secure hosting of vendor-neutral digital evidence content management and longterm digital evidence storage for public safety organizations across Canada. We refuse to wait for another global crisis to highlight our vulnerabilities. We’re building a self-reliant and secure Canadian sovereign cloud now, to ensure a secure and innovative future for Canada. References: 1. Electronics360, “Canada to spend $240 million to grow chip manufacturing (March 2022).” https:// electronics360.globalspec.com/ article/17841/canada-to-spend240-million-to-grow-chip-manufacturing 2. Help Net Security, “How serious are organizations about their data sovereignty strategies? (September 2022).” https://www.helpnetsecurity.com/2022/09/16/datasovereignty-strategies/ 3. Government of Canada, “Government of Canada White Paper: Data Sovereignty and Public Cloud (July 2020).” https:// www.canada.ca/en/government/ system/digital-government/ digital-government-innovations/ cloud-services/gc-white-paperdata-sovereignty-public-cloud. html 4. Government of Canada, “Government of Canada White Paper: Data Sovereignty and Public Cloud (July 2020).” https:// www.canada.ca/en/government/ system/digital-government/ digital-government-innovations/ cloud-services/gc-white-paperdata-sovereignty-public-cloud. html 5. Help Net Security, “How serious are organizations about their data sovereignty strategies? (September 2022)” https://www. helpnetsecurity.com/2022/09/16/ data-sovereignty-strategies/ John Slater is a technology and cybersecurity specialist whose industry and executive leadership spans more than four decades and multiple top Canadian tech companies. Slater’s extensive career includes the role of Director of Sales at The Herjavec Group, VP of Burntsand Inc., and Cofounder of Indigenet Technology Partners—a social enterprise whose mission is to “advance Indigenous lives through technology.” He is especially adept at delivering high-security technology projects to federal, provincial, municipal and First Nations governments. As CSO of ThinkOn, Slater leads a specialized team focused on ensuring that every aspect of ThinkOn’s operations, from our solutions to our data centres and every point in between, exceeds industry security and compliance standards. Slater is proud to be part of ThinkOn’s team of data-obsessed (and security-obsessed) experts, helping to make customers’ data more resilient, secure, workable, and searchable. Spring 2023 // Canadian Government Executive / 27 Sponsored Content PERSPECTIVE
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