Cisco has become the latest vendor to launch offerings to take advantage of the growing demand for data sovereignty.

Cisco’s Sovereign Critical Infrastructure portfolio provides customers with their own air-gapped environments across its entire core product line to enable them to build their own on-premises or hybrid sovereign infrastructure.

Routing, switching, and select endpoint devices come as part of the service, with Cisco unable to remotely disable any of its included products.

“Our customers want control over their digital infrastructure and data, while enjoying the freedom to choose the right deployment models for their operations, security postures, and strategic goals,” Gordon Thomson, president of Cisco EMEA, explained. “Today's announcement provides that, ensuring customers have the technology and flexibility to build secure, resilient digital systems.”

Cisco said its Sovereign Critical Infrastructure offering will help customers meet European compliance and standards requirements.

The EU is imposing tough rules in a bid to create a fairer data economy. Legislation like the bloc’s Data Act imposes stringent security requirements for connected devices and allows government agencies access to private user data in the event of public emergencies.

The legislation also forces providers to implement measures preventing non-European governmental authorities from accessing non-personal data. Upon announcing its new sovereign infrastructure portfolio, Cisco said mission-critical systems for government users are “firmly under their control.”

Cisco is also positioning its new offering for AI data center operators, or so-called AI factories. The vendor suggested its offering can be used to support the continent’s data center bailout to “form the bedrock of Europe's Sovereign AI infrastructure.”

“The importance of network sovereignty cannot be underestimated, especially for organizations responsible for critical national infrastructure,” Rahiel Nasir, research director for European cloud and lead analyst for worldwide digital sovereignty at IDC, noted as part of the Cisco launch. “Operational resilience is key for these organizations, who seek the extra controls, protections, and autonomy that genuine digital sovereignty solutions can bring. This is especially true when it comes to network sovereignty – a challenge that few network infrastructure providers thus far have been able to address.”

Cisco joins an ever-growing list of vendors launching services and suites to meet continental data sovereignty demands.

Both Microsoft and Amazon Web Services (AWS) launched Euro-centric cloud services to appease continental lawmakers, while Oracle unveiled a database offering that distributes, stores, and synchronizes data across multiple locations, while maintaining compliance requirements.

Deutsche Telekom’s T Systems business unit went one step further by appointing a dedicated chief sovereignty officer to oversee the firm’s company-wide sovereignty strategy.