How digitally sovereign are you? Red Hat can help measure that

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ZDNET's cardinal takeaways

• As spot successful US tech companies wanes, the value of integer sovereignty grows.
• Red Hat's open-source valuation toolkit helps you measure your integer sovereignty.
• You, not Red Hat, power your information and however you usage the evaluation. 

Over the past year, respective governments and companies extracurricular the US person decided they can't spot American tech companies. So,  digital sovereignty has go an important goal. While American companies, arsenic you tin imagine, aren't blessed astir that, they're present helping European organizations to execute their integer sovereignty goals.

One of the archetypal of these was Linux and cloud-native computing powerhouse Red Hat. Late past year, Red Hat became the first US institution to announce its ain EU-specific integer sovereignty program, Red Hat Confirmed Sovereign Support (RHCSS). This inaugural guarantees captious European IT operations stay nether EU control.

Also: Why adjacent a US tech elephantine is launching 'sovereign support' for Europe now

Now, Red Hat is backing this inaugural with its open-source Digital Sovereignty Readiness Assessment toolkit. This instrumentality is designed to springiness governments and enterprises a factual mode to measurement however overmuch power they really person implicit their data, infrastructure, and operations successful an epoch of geopolitical unreality anxiety.

This caller web-based, self-service survey walks organizations done 21 multiple-choice questions. Areas covered see information residency, encryption cardinal control, catastrophe betterment readying for geopolitical events, and the quality to forestall delicate information from crossing borders. The extremity is to determination integer sovereignty from vague argumentation speech to a measurable "sovereignty baseline" that IT and concern leaders tin enactment on.

An 'open standard' for assessing integer sovereignty

If you person each the accusation you request astatine hand, it should instrumentality you 10 to 15 minutes to implicit the survey.

Red Hat's model evaluates sovereignty maturity crossed 7 domains: information sovereignty, method sovereignty, operational sovereignty, assurance sovereignty, unfastened root strategy, enforcement oversight, and managed services. At the extremity of the questionnaire, organizations person a people mapped to 4 stages: foundation, developing, strategic, and advanced. It besides includes a roadmap of recommended adjacent steps and probe questions for stakeholders.

Also: Why unfastened root whitethorn not past the emergence of generative AI

In a notable twist for a abstraction often dominated by opaque consulting playbooks, Red Hat is releasing some the instrumentality and its underlying criteria nether the Apache 2.0 license, positioning it arsenic an "open standard" for assessing integer sovereignty. The program's root codification and methodology are connected GitHub. Red Hat stresses that the model is vendor-neutral and tin beryllium adopted, extended, oregon forked by partners, competing vendors, and extremity users alike.

As Hans Roth, Red Hat's elder VP and wide manager for EMEA, said successful a statement, "For sovereignty to beryllium existent and obtainable, the behind-the-scenes mathematics indispensable beryllium accountable and unfastened for inspection. Red Hat is providing the transparent modular to springiness our customers the assurance that their sovereign strategy is precisely that."

Worried Red Hat mightiness beryllium looking implicit your shoulder? Don't be. The instrumentality is designed truthful that each appraisal information stays successful the browser and is not sent backmost to Red Hat oregon immoderate 3rd party. If you want, you tin simply download the codification and tally it connected your ain server. Roth convincingly argues that this operation of unfastened criteria and local-only information handling helps determination the manufacture distant from "blind trust" toward an auditable, verifiable exemplary of sovereignty.

Also: Why France conscionable dumped Microsoft Teams and Zoom - and what's replacing them

Of course, Red Hat hopes you'll crook to their services to execute your integer sovereignty goal, but there's nary request that you bash so. You determine what to bash with the investigation and whether you privation to articulation 1 of the galore different European-based governments, companies, and organizations that are waving goodbye to Amazon Web Services, Microsoft, oregon Google unreality services.

Mind you, each these US tech giants are besides present offering their ain integer sovereignty initiatives. The Digital Sovereignty Readiness Assessment toolkit tin assistance you determine whether these US offerings conscionable your needs.