AWS Security for EU Companies

Running on AWS as an EU company doesn't automatically make you GDPR compliant, GDPR is a legal framework governing how personal data is processed and protected, and satisfying it depends entirely on how your specific environment is architected and operated. AWS offers regions physically located in the EU (Ireland, Frankfurt, Paris, Stockholm, Milan, and others), which is a real, useful tool for data residency, but choosing an EU region alone doesn't address encryption, access control, data subject rights (the ability to actually locate, export, or delete a specific individual's data on request), or breach notification processes, all of which GDPR requires regardless of where the underlying infrastructure sits.

For companies that also fall under DORA, banks, insurers, investment firms, payment institutions, and crypto-asset service providers operating in the EU, there's a second, distinct layer: ICT risk management, incident reporting, and resilience testing requirements that GDPR doesn't cover at all. We architect for both together where both apply, rather than treating them as unrelated projects that happen to share the word "EU."

Cross-border data transfer is often the part teams get wrong: if any part of your stack (a SaaS vendor, a support tool, a monitoring service) sends EU personal data outside the EU/EEA, that transfer needs a valid legal mechanism, Standard Contractual Clauses being the most common, not just an assumption that "it's probably fine." We map your actual data flows, not just your AWS region selection, to find where this actually applies.