Gemalto building EU data centres to satiate GDPR

Cybersecurity specialist Gemalto has announced it will be building data centers across the European Union (EU).

The company is intending to expand its delivery footprint for Access Management as a service in addition to putting its shoes in line for the EU's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

The locations or numbers of the new data centers haven't been disclosed.

Gemalto Identity and Access Management senior vice president Francois Lasnier says the new facilities are a direct response to the relentless demand for its cloud-based authentication and access management solutions, in addition to concerns around data sovereignty.

"With GDPR and other legislations putting pressure on our EU customers to ensure that their data is secure, we've seen a large increase in demand for control over where cloud services are delivered from," says Lasnier.

"As our service expands, it's important that we continue to provide our customers with the best means to manage access to multiple cloud services, and provide the flexibility and agility to scale as they require."

The highlights of the new data center expansion include:

• All the facilities and services are ISO 27001 and SOC2 certified
• They are multi-tier and multi-tenancy allowing organisations to share cloud-based authentication and access management services across business units and departments
• Stringent Service Level Agreements across all its data centers with 99.99% service availability

And it's not just in the EU, as the company has revealed it intends to continue a global expansion with new data centers in North America due to be launched later this to allow international organisations more selection over service delivery location as well as the means to meet local regulatory and compliance requirements.

"Expansion into these data centers clearly reflect the philosophy behind our cloud strategy - to expand our footprint while taking advantage of the latest innovations in cloud service delivery and offering more flexibility to our customers," says Lasnier.

"Moreover, our cloud service architecture also allows managed service partners and resellers to partner with us to offer their own branded cloud-based access management services without having to invest in the infrastructure."

The company certainly has the financial means to deploy further facilities, as it maintains a revenue of around €3 billion with customers in more than 180 countries.