Cloud Storage
Hot Storage
Official Sensitive storage
Achieve Sovereign Official Sensitive Storage in the UK
Handling 'Official Sensitive' data requires more than just secure servers; it demands true data sovereignty. UK organisations face a complex web of regulations, from GDPR to the NIS-2 Directive, making provider origin a critical factor.
Key Takeaways
True data sovereignty for Official Sensitive storage is only achievable with a 100% European-owned and operated cloud provider, eliminating exposure to foreign laws like the US CLOUD Act.
Upcoming regulations like the NIS-2 Directive and EU Data Act require advanced security features like immutable storage and a commitment to data portability with no vendor lock-in.
A predictable pricing model with no egress fees or API call costs is critical for managing public sector and enterprise budgets, while enabling MSPs to build profitable, compliant services.
Storing UK government or enterprise data marked as 'Official Sensitive' presents a significant challenge for IT leaders. While not a formal classification, this handling caveat requires risk-appropriate security measures under GDPR. The choice of a cloud storage provider has direct implications for compliance with the CLOUD Act, the EU Data Act, and the NIS-2 Directive. An enterprise-ready, sovereign cloud storage solution built on European soil offers a clear path to meeting these stringent requirements without sacrificing performance or cost predictability. This approach ensures data remains under EU legal control, a crucial factor for over 70% of decision-makers.
Secure Data from Foreign Jurisdictional Overreach
Storing sensitive UK data with non-EU providers creates significant legal risks. The US CLOUD Act of 2018 allows US authorities to demand access to data held by American companies, regardless of where the servers are located. This directly conflicts with GDPR Article 48, which requires a formal international treaty for such data transfers. Choosing a 100% European-owned and operated cloud is the only guaranteed way to avoid this conflict. Impossible Cloud’s architecture ensures your data sovereignty, keeping it exclusively within certified EU data centers and subject only to EU law. This design eliminates exposure to third-country legal demands completely.
This jurisdictional clarity is essential for maintaining control over Official Sensitive data. Our country-level geofencing provides another layer of assurance, restricting data to predefined regions to meet specific regulatory needs. With this foundation, you can build a storage strategy that is sovereign by design. The next step is ensuring this sovereign foundation aligns with evolving cybersecurity mandates.
Meet NIS-2 and EU Data Act Mandates by Design
The NIS-2 Directive sets a new, higher bar for cybersecurity across 18 critical sectors, with enforcement beginning in late 2024. It mandates robust risk management, supply chain security, and the use of strong encryption to protect network and information systems. Similarly, the EU Data Act, fully applicable from September 2025, focuses on preventing vendor lock-in by enforcing data portability. Providers must offer clear exit paths, including metadata and configurations, without punitive fees. Impossible Cloud meets these challenges head-on with a feature set built for modern compliance.
Our platform provides the tools needed to satisfy these upcoming regulations:
Immutable Storage: Using S3 Object Lock, we make data unchangeable for a set period, a key defense against ransomware and a core component of a NIS-2 strategy.
Multi-Layer Encryption: All data is protected with AES-256 encryption in transit and at rest, meeting a foundational NIS-2 requirement.
Zero Egress Fees: Our transparent pricing model, with zero egress fees or API call costs, aligns perfectly with the EU Data Act’s goal of eliminating switching barriers.
Full S3 API Compatibility: We ensure seamless data portability, allowing you to move data and applications without costly code rewrites, protecting your investment in a GDPR-compliant object storage solution.
With compliance addressed, the focus shifts to the technical capabilities required to handle sensitive workloads effectively and reliably.
Utilise an Enterprise-Ready, Always-Hot Architecture
Storing Official Sensitive data demands consistent performance and immediate accessibility. Complex, tiered storage models often fail here, introducing restore delays of hours and unpredictable fees that disrupt operations. Impossible Cloud employs an “Always-Hot” object storage model, ensuring 100% of your data is instantly available. This simplifies your architecture and eliminates the risk of API timeouts during critical restore operations. Our platform is built for consistency, delivering predictable latencies for the most demanding workloads.
Full S3 compatibility is central to our enterprise-ready promise, protecting your existing investments:
Standard Operations: We support all basic S3 API calls, ensuring your existing scripts and backup tools work on day one.
Advanced Capabilities: Our support extends to versioning, lifecycle management, and event notifications for complex data pipelines.
Identity Management: We integrate with external IdPs via SAML/OIDC for secure, role-driven access control.
Seamless Migration: The 1:1 API compatibility means you can migrate from other S3 providers with minimal risk or code changes.
This robust architecture is verified against top EU standards, aligning with frameworks like Germany's BSI C5. This level of reliability is critical, especially when defending against modern threats like ransomware, which requires more than just performance. It requires a new level of resilience, as seen in our ISO 27001 certified storage.
Deploy Immutable Backups for Ransomware Protection
Ransomware attacks now occur every 11 seconds, making immutable storage a cornerstone of any modern data protection strategy. For Official Sensitive data, an unchangeable backup copy is not just a best practice; it is an essential defense. Impossible Cloud’s Immutable Storage, using S3 Object Lock, provides WORM (Write-Once-Read-Many) protection. Once an object is locked, it cannot be altered or deleted by anyone—not even an administrator with root access—for its entire retention period. This creates a guaranteed-clean recovery point.
This feature directly supports a robust zero-trust security model for your backups. It provides a verifiable, audit-ready retention policy that ensures data integrity for compliance and disaster recovery. Our out-of-the-box integration with leading backup vendors like NovaBackup simplifies the deployment of a 3-2-1 compliant backup strategy. This technical resilience must be matched by a financial model that UK organisations can depend on.
Leverage Predictable Economics for Stable Budgets
Public sector and enterprise budgets require absolute cost predictability. Hyperscale cloud providers often obscure total costs with complex fee structures, including egress charges that penalize you for accessing your own data. A 10 TB data retrieval can unexpectedly add thousands to a monthly bill. Impossible Cloud eliminates this uncertainty entirely. Our pricing model is transparent and predictable, with zero egress fees, zero API call costs, and no minimum storage durations.
This straightforward approach provides predictable margins for our partners and stable, forecastable costs for direct customers. You pay a single, clear price for the storage you use, enabling better long-term financial planning. This economic advantage is particularly powerful for our Managed Service Provider (MSP) partners, who can build profitable, compliant services on our platform. Our growing UK distribution network, including our partnership with Northamber plc, makes this value more accessible than ever for those seeking G-Cloud storage solutions.
Empower UK Partners and MSPs with a Channel-First Platform
We are committed to enabling our UK channel partners with a platform that is predictable by design. For MSPs, resellers, and system integrators, our model provides defensible margins for Backup-as-a-Service (BaaS) and archiving solutions. The absence of egress and API fees means the price you quote your clients is stable, protecting your profitability. Our recent partnership with UK distributor Northamber plc expands local access and support for hundreds of resellers across the country.
Our partner console is built for efficiency and scale, featuring key capabilities for MSPs:
Multi-Tenant Management: Securely manage multiple client accounts from a single, intuitive interface with robust role-based access control (RBAC).
Full Automation: Utilise our comprehensive API and CLI to automate provisioning, management, and reporting tasks, reducing your operational overhead by up to 40%.
Simplified Compliance: Offer your clients a simple path to GDPR and NIS-2 readiness for their backup and archive data.
Fast Onboarding: We provide dedicated support to get our partners up and running in hours, not weeks.
Ready to build your sovereign storage strategy? Talk to an expert to see how our platform can secure your Official Sensitive data.
More Links
UK government provides guidance on handling official sensitive data and IT.
UK's Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) offers cloud computing guidance for organizations.
UK government details the government security classifications policy.
Bitkom presents its Cloud Report 2024.
German Data Protection Conference (DSK) publishes a position paper on criteria for sovereign clouds.
ENISA offers a report on cloud computing.
FAQ
How does Impossible Cloud ensure data sovereignty?
Impossible Cloud is a European company that operates exclusively in certified European data centers. By ensuring our entire corporate and operational structure is under EU jurisdiction, we legally shield your data from foreign laws like the US CLOUD Act, guaranteeing true digital sovereignty.
Is your storage platform compatible with my existing backup software?
Yes. We offer full S3 API compatibility, which means our platform works out-of-the-box with leading backup and recovery software like Veeam, Rubrik, and our partner NovaBackup. You can migrate your existing workflows without needing to rewrite scripts or change tools.
What makes your pricing model 'predictable'?
Our pricing is based on a simple, single metric: the amount of data you store. We have no egress fees for data retrieval, no charges for API requests, and no minimum storage duration. This eliminates surprise costs and allows for precise, stable budget forecasting.
How does your 'Always-Hot' architecture benefit me?
Our 'Always-Hot' model ensures all your data is immediately accessible at all times, with no delays or fees for data retrieval. This is superior to tiered models that can take hours to restore archived data, which is a critical advantage for disaster recovery and analytics workloads.
What support do you offer for UK-based MSPs?
We provide a channel-first platform with a multi-tenant partner console, full automation via API/CLI, and predictable pricing for stable margins. Through our UK distributor, Northamber plc, we offer local support, fast onboarding, and resources to help MSPs deliver sovereign BaaS and archive solutions.
Is your platform certified against recognised security standards?
Yes, our data centers and operations are certified against key international and European standards, including ISO 27001. Our security controls also align with the principles of stringent frameworks like the German BSI C5 catalogue, ensuring an authority-grade level of security.
