WIELAND HOLFELDER: Hello, and welcome to the session
Advancing Digital Sovereignty as part of Google Cloud Next 2021.
Great to have you, and thanks for joining.
My name is Wieland Holfelder.
I'm an engineering VP and Site Lead for the Google Engineering
Center in Munich, Germany.
For many reasons, digital sovereignty
has been getting more and more attention recently.
The regulatory environment relating to the Cloud
is very dynamic, and we see the overall trend
in the direction of European and also global,
for that matter, strategic autonomy
and digital sovereignty.
This includes greater European control over Cloud data
and software, and we see this trend in member states
at the EU level and in European public private partnerships
like the GAIA-X project.
At Google Cloud, we are committed
to making sure our products and services provide
what our customers need.
Let me start with outlining our mission at Google Cloud.
We aim to accelerate every organization's ability
to digitally transform through data-powered innovation
with the most secure infrastructure, open platforms,
industry solutions, and expertise.
And we do that by offering the most secure infrastructure
as a service, an open digital transformation
platform, and industry-specific digital transformation
solutions.
To work successfully with organizations
both public and private, one thing is very clear.
We must deliver services on their terms, aligned
to their priorities and values.
We want to deliver solutions that meet these demands,
meet customers where they are, while at the same time seeking
to avoid issues of fragmentation and disruption
to existing infrastructure.
For example, the development of railways in the 19th century
drove tremendous industrial progress and growth.
However, the creation of different rail sizing standards
in each country or region led to break-of-gauge issues
when trains reach national borders, adding delays,
inconvenience, and cost.
The illustration here adds a bit of levity
to our discussion depicting the horrors of goods transfers
at the break-of-gauge at Gloucester in England in 1843.
The issues that were faced then were serious,
and we want to make sure we learn from it
and don't repeat it.
The decisions that organizations and governments make today
will have implications that reach far into the future,
so they must be thoughtfully and carefully considered.
For example, how can we ensure local sovereignty
without allowing digital fragmentation, how
can we avoid recreating break-of-gauge type issues
in the digital world, and how can we
ensure that short-term pressure does not
lead to undesirable long-term implications?
Infrastructure decision typically
have very long-term implications because making
fundamental changes is always very disruptive and costly.
To meet the growing customer requirements for sovereignty
and to ease adoption of these capabilities,
we need to build them directly into the Cloud
infrastructure that enables digital transformation.
Security is a fundamental part of this,
and Google Cloud offers a strong foundation that
includes consistent controls throughout the Cloud,
transparency into our controls and emerging capabilities
to exercise true sovereign control over data
and operations, a zero-trust architecture
to protect data against threats, and an operating model where
we take an active stake in customers' security outcomes.
Now, when we hear the need for digital sovereignty
from our customers, it is often unclear
what exactly digital sovereignty actually means to them.
At Google Cloud, we therefore have broken it down
into three very clear pillars--
data sovereignty, which means customers
have full control over their data,
including storing and managing encryption keys
outside the Cloud, providing an extra layer of control
over your data to our agile, scalable, and innovative public
Cloud capabilities, operational sovereignty, which
means giving customers direct visibility
and control over Cloud operations,
and last but not least, there is software sovereignty.
This is often also referred to as survivability and means
of protection against unforeseen catastrophic events.
We believe that software sovereignty and survivability
can only be accomplished with a modern open Cloud approach
based on open source solutions.
This is why Google has committed very strongly to an open Cloud,
and we have based many of our core Cloud
Services for computing and data management
on open source solutions.
Now let's look at data sovereignty in a bit
more detail and how Google Cloud can help today with data
sovereignty requirements.
First of all, it is important to reiterate that in Google Cloud,
our customers' data is our customers' data,
and we never sell it or use it for advertising, or training
AI models, or for other uses not requested by our customers.
This is often not understood, but we take this very,
very seriously and make strong contractual commitments
to this end.
Google Cloud provides customers with the ability
to decide where they want to store their data.
We ensure that it stays in that location,
and we also ensure that the data is encrypted
at rest and in transit.
We also provide controls to limit data access for users,
for administrators, and also for Cloud provider administrators.
These are capabilities that are all
available in Google Cloud today used by many customers
to meet their policy and compliance objectives.
Furthermore, customer controls provided by Google Cloud
include storing and managing encryption keys
outside the Cloud, giving customers the power
to only grant access to these keys
based on detailed access justifications.
Taken together, these two capabilities
make customers the ultimate arbiter of access
to their data.
Customers have the ability to deny Google administrators
access to their data for any reason,
even in situations typically exempted from customer control,
such as outages or responses to third party data requests.
We do this by providing customers
a clear reason why access to keys are needed
and why data is being decrypted, which they can then
use to programmatically decide whether to permit access
to the key to allow decryption and thus to allow access
to their data.
We even give customers the ability
to protect data in use while it is being processed.
So enterprise-ready confidential computing technology,
we are pioneering.
Using confidential computing, encryption keys
that are generated in hardware are not exportable
and not accessible to Google.
Finally, know that our security and privacy practices are
continually validated against the international standards,
and the results of these audits and certifications
are available for you to review.
We make sovereign controls to help
meet data sovereignty requirements
available through assured workloads.
It helps automate the deployment and enforcement
of platform capabilities for data
residency in the European Cloud, cryptographic control over data
access, including customer-controlled encryption
keys, and customer support provided by personnel
in European office locations.
All this is on a per workload basis ensuring
that these technical and operational controls for data
sovereignty are always properly configured and enforced.
Because these controls are enforced on existing Google
Cloud infrastructure, customers don't
have to choose between achieving data sovereignty objectives
and using the latest Cloud technology and offerings.
This on-fabric approach is unique to Google Cloud
and opens up options for trusted partners
to deliver additional levels of sovereignty
on top of this foundation.
Now let's look at operational sovereignty a bit more.
Operational sovereignty gives our customers
visibility and control over Google's operations,
and we provide transparency, inspectability, and security
operating in a zero-trust model.
As I noted, customers can view and control
decryption operations and access to data or configurations
by Google admins.
They can also view our security configurations and monitor
changes to our infrastructure and our hardware.
We give our customers auditability
with consolidated tamper-evident Cloud audit logs,
and we provide the ability to deny unauthorized access.
In selected regions, we also can provide local support
and local administration, but we recognize
that there will be customers who have
additional operational sovereignty needs focused
on the independent operation and verification of these controls
on their behalf.
Trusted partners can help meet those more stringent
requirements, so let's explore this option in a little bit
more detail.
Customers want access to best in class Cloud services
and capabilities, but they may be more comfortable working
with a trusted local partner.
We want to enable this operating model so they can get both.
So when we say we can provide third party administration
in operations, we mean that we have the option
to deliver Google Cloud services via a trusted
local partner to our customers.
This includes the ability for the trusted local partner
to manage all the sovereignty controls I previously
highlighted, but also value-added services
such as oversight, independent audits,
external key management to separate the key holder,
and data holder, and others.
We think a model like this will be of particular interest
to organizations in highly-regulated industries
and the public sector.
In such a model, Google Cloud will
continue to provide the technical platform,
both hardware and software, which is the public Google
Cloud platform.
A trusted partner can operate and offer a sovereign Cloud,
build on this foundation, upon which
they will manage a set of sovereignty controls
and measures, including encryption,
and provide a set of guarantees around the operations
of these controls.
Customers will be able to choose whether they
want to use the public Cloud, and operate sovereign controls
themselves, and place trust in Google,
or whether they would prefer to use a trusted partner's
sovereign Cloud, where the partner
operates the sovereignty controls and provides
guarantees.
We're now delivering on this vision
collaboratively with trusted local technology
providers in Europe.
We started the T-Systems in Germany
and recently announced our partnership
with Thales in France.
Together with our partners, we built a sovereign Cloud
offering for private and public sector organizations
specific to each of these markets,
and in these new joint offerings,
our trusted partners, T-Systems and Thales,
will manage sovereignty controls and measures,
including encryption and identity management
of the Google Cloud platform.
In addition, as part of their offerings,
T-Systems and Thales will operate and independently
control key parts of the Google Cloud infrastructure
for their customers in Germany and France.
These two partnerships are just the beginning,
and we will continue partnering with trusted technology
providers in selected markets across the region.
Now, our last pillar is what we call software sovereignty.
It speaks to two related but separate requirements we have.
One is the ability to avoid vendor lock-in, which
shares some similarities with the requirements for data
portability articulated in the GDPR.
Organizations want the flexibility
to be able to move workloads from one provider
or one set of infrastructure to another.
The use of proprietary technology
makes this very difficult.
Another is the ability to achieve continuity
of operations without reliance on the provider
for a period of time or even permanently,
either by choice or as a result of a disaster or other material
event.
Our strong belief is that software sovereignty
and survivability can really only
be accomplished with a modern open Cloud approach based
on open source solutions.
Google Cloud is very committed to this approach.
We provide platforms that allow customers to manage workloads
across providers and orchestration tooling
that allows customers to create a single API that can be backed
by applications running on different providers,
including proprietary, Cloud-based, and open source
alternatives.
Open source has another sovereignty benefit
that also needs to be considered-- the portability
and transferability of skills.
Choosing and using Clouds based on an open source
foundation, rather than proprietary tooling,
makes sure that the skills you build and invest
in for your employees can be independent
of the Cloud provider you choose.
To help address the most demanding
operational in software sovereignty requirements,
we have announced here at Next a new offering called
Google Distributed Cloud.
Google Distributed Cloud is a set
of fully-managed, integrated hardware and software
solutions that can extend Google Cloud's infrastructure
and services to customer data centers and other locations.
It is enabled by Anthos.
Google Distributed Cloud operates in hosted mode
to run sensitive workloads in a customer data
center or co-location facility, and hosted
mode does not require connectivity
to Google Cloud at any time to manage infrastructure,
services, APIs, or tooling and uses a local control
plane for operations.
Now, to summarize Google Cloud's sovereign solutions,
here is an overview.
Many of the capabilities that customers have asked for
do not necessarily require the full set
of sovereignty controls, the ones that
are truly outside of the Cloud provider's control.
But if you need them, we have them.
So what is important here is that we provide our customers
a full spectrum of flexible sovereignty solutions,
including built-in platform controls that you manage,
partner options for greater operational sovereignty
like our partnership with T-Systems and Thales,
and distributed Cloud options for greater
operational and software sovereignty.
This flexibility means that our customers
can decide how to trade cost and complexity for a higher
degree of sovereignty.
Our goal is to build sovereignty into our platform, rather than
building walls around it.
We believe this is a more flexible, scalable,
future-proof implementation of sovereignty that ultimately
avoids the digital version of the break-of-gauge,
just to come back to that earlier example.
Before we close, let me say a few words
about a sovereign Cloud project that we also deeply care about
and that I'm sure most of you are familiar with, GAIA-X.
Google Cloud is a day one member of GAIA-X, which describes
itself as a secure federated system that meets the highest
standards of digital sovereignty while promoting innovation.
In practice, GAIA-X intends to give companies
a means to understand, control, and benefit from their data.
Open source and open systems play a leading role
in the operational basis for digital sovereignty,
and they're committed to using open standards to make sure
that engineers in Europe and elsewhere
have the best, most widely-applicable tools
and training.
Europe has a long and positive, proactive force
in fostering a healthy digital future.
Before GAIA-X, there was the General Data Protection
Regulation or GDPR, a European law on data protection
and privacy that has gone on to be a legislative model
for many parts of the world.
I believe GAIA-X has a very similar opportunity.
To conclude, Google Cloud is committed
to openness, security, trust, and transparency
to provide our customers the most flexible sovereignty
solutions on their terms.
Our Cloud-native capabilities enable control
over data location, access, and encryption.
Sovereignty is provided across a spectrum of data, operational
and software sovereignty.
Our approach, with strong local partnerships and a distributed
Cloud option, will enable us to be
responsive to future government and customer sovereignty
requirements.
And our commitment to open Cloud and open source
is truly differentiating, and not only avoids vendor lock-in,
but also makes sure that the skills you build and invest
in for your employees can be independent of the Cloud
provider you choose.
More than anything, what all these processes are about
comes down to one thing.
Technology is not an impersonal force of nature.
It is the product of human values, aspirations,
and hard work.
How these things work out is up to us,
as individuals and societies, and that often
begins at the very start of how we think about deploying
new technologies.
I hope you take away in this session
that we, at Google Cloud, deeply care about sovereignty
and are committed to provide you a transformation
Cloud on your terms.
To learn more, you can see our Google Cloud
webpage on digital sovereignty.
And watch the live demo on the new Google Distributed Cloud
technology here at Next and see many of our other sessions
in our security products and security tracks.
Thank you, and enjoy the rest of the summit.