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Cyber Essentials glossary

Data Sovereignty

Data sovereignty concerns the laws and authorities that can affect data; data residency concerns physical storage location. A UK region alone does not determine every legal obligation or international transfer: access, backups, telemetry and subprocessors also matter. Confirm the actual service and contractual data flow before asserting UK-only processing; UK GDPR does not universally require UK hosting.

Why this term matters for access control

Identity and access-control terms are central to Cyber Essentials v3.3 because every account that can access organisational data must be protected appropriately. The assessor is looking for actual enforcement, not just a policy that says users should behave securely.

A practical evidence trail might include MFA enforcement, disabled legacy authentication, separate admin accounts, conditional access policies, account lockout, and leaver access removal records.

How Fig Group uses this term

Fig Group uses Data Sovereignty as part of a practical Cyber Essentials and compliance vocabulary. The purpose is to make assessment decisions easier to verify: what the term means, where it appears in evidence, which control it supports, and which buyer or assessor question it helps answer.

If this term affects your Cyber Essentials submission, treat it as an evidence question rather than a definition question. Document the relevant owner, system, configuration, policy, or workflow so an assessor can see how the control works in your environment.

Official sources and related guidance

For scheme interpretation, verify against official NCSC and IASME material. Fig Group's glossary is designed to translate those concepts into implementation language for UK organisations, MSPs, and procurement teams.

Fig Group is an IASME-licensed Cyber Essentials certification body (licence 325cdf33-3812-4082-bf8d-7dce7ac02977) that certifies UK organisations from £299.99 + VAT. Its six-working-hour Basic turnaround guarantee applies to complete, compliant submissions received before midday on a UK business day, subject to the certification terms. Three free re-submissions are included. Learn more at Cyber Essentials certification, see pricing at certification prices, or run the free readiness checker.