IBM is continuing its sovereignty push after it launched a risk profile tool it claims can give enterprises greater compliance visibility across their hybrid multicloud environments.

The IBM Cloud Sovereignty Risk Profile, which is integrated into the firm’s Security and Compliance Center Workload Protection (SCC-WP) platform, provides continuous monitoring across cloud workloads.

IBM Cloud Sovereignty Risk Profile aims to give enterprises and governments a way to assess and measure control for a host of requirements, including data residency, encryption, resilience, concentration risk, and operational independence as AI workloads scale and regulatory oversight intensifies. It can assess controls across cloud workloads as well as control over encryption keys through its existing keep-your-own-key (KYOK) technology.

IBM claims that AI systems scale and that supply chains are growing more complex, but visibility into data location, system behavior, and authority over workloads is lacking.

SDxCentral’s recently published Sovereignty Supplement examined the concept of cloud control and how so-called "sovereignty washing" has muddied the waters around actual compliance needs in the cloud space.

IBM cited a study from its own Institute for Business Value – conducted alongside the Dubai Future Foundation – which found that 93% of surveyed executives believe sovereignty must be factored into their business strategy. Just 18% of those surveyed, however, said they maintain an up‑to‑date AI inventory.

“As organizations adopt cloud services and scale AI, questions around data sovereignty and residency become more urgent,” Alan Peacock, GM of IBM, wrote upon unveiling the Risk Profile offering. “Enterprises must expect their cloud custodians to provide them with control over data location, data access, data encryption, and operational independence.”

IBM has been among the vocal vendors sounding the sovereignty alarm for some time.

The AI Alliance, a non-profit it founded with Meta, recently released an open-source platform tailored for sovereign AI deployments. The offering aims to provide means for users to keep control over their own data when using open models, while also providing them with the means to build “sovereign derivative models.”