The promise of the public cloud; scalability, elasticity, and rapid deployment, has driven widespread adoption. But for many EU organisations, that promise is now being tempered by practical realities around compliance, control, and legal jurisdiction. Increasingly, businesses are reassessing which workloads truly belong in the cloud, and which are better kept on-premise or within sovereign infrastructure models.
Among the systems under growing scrutiny are those responsible for secure data transfers (MFT) and data processing (ETL). These are not peripheral technologies. They’re the arteries and engines of operational data flow, and they carry the kind of high-risk information that regulators, security officers, and auditors are paying closer attention to.
Where Compliance Meets Contradiction: NIS2 vs. the U.S. CLOUD Act
A key concern for many EU organisations is the legal tension between European regulations like NIS2 and GDPR, and U.S. laws like the CLOUD Act.
Even when data is stored in EU-based data centres managed by U.S. cloud providers, it’s still subject to U.S. federal law. The CLOUD Act allows U.S. agencies to demand access to data, regardless of where it physically resides, without informing the data owner and without going through EU judicial oversight.
This presents a clear contradiction with NIS2, which demands:
- Transparent governance of critical systems
- Sovereign control over data assets
- Accountability in the event of a breach or audit
If data processed via your cloud-hosted MFT or ETL pipelines is silently accessed by a foreign authority, your organisation may be in breach of EU laws without ever knowing it.
Why MFT and ETL Are Central to the Repatriation Discussion
MFT (Managed File Transfer) and ETL (Extract, Transform, Load) systems sit at the intersection of data movement, integration, and compliance. They handle:
- Confidential file transfers between internal systems, third parties, and regulators
- Transformation and aggregation of personal and operational data for reporting, analytics, or regulatory disclosures
When these systems are cloud-hosted in a non-sovereign environment:
- You risk losing visibility into where your data is going
- You may not have control over who can access it or under what legal framework
- You’re potentially exposed to cross-border surveillance or silent subpoenas
These aren’t theoretical concerns, they’re active risk vectors that undermine the spirit of both GDPR and NIS2, which place strong emphasis on data minimisation, purpose limitation, and control.
A More Nuanced Approach: Hybrid and Sovereign Strategies
This isn’t a wholesale rejection of cloud. Many organisations are finding value in hybrid models, keeping sensitive MFT and ETL workflows on-premise or in private environments, while using public cloud for less critical services.
The shift is toward intentional deployment, putting the right workload in the right environment, based on risk profile, legal exposure, and operational needs.
The Bottom Line
In today’s environment, digital autonomy and regulatory alignment are not optional, especially when critical data flows are involved. Whether you’re managing sensitive healthcare records, financial disclosures, or large-scale regulatory reporting, the infrastructure behind your MFT and ETL systems needs to be secure, sovereign, and compliant by design.
That’s why whether you determine that cloud, hybrid, or fully on-premise is the right fit for your organisation, Wizuda has you covered with flexible deployment options that align with your risk tolerance, operational priorities, and compliance obligations.
