IBM Digital Sovereignty Index: 94% of Enterprises Faced a Sovereignty Challenge in Three Years, Only 26% Reach the Leading Tier
IBM released a new report, Proof, Not Promises: The Digital Sovereignty Index, in Armonk, New York, on November 11. The report found that 94% of enterprises surveyed faced at least one sovereignty challenge in the last three years, and 81% of those had to provide formal evidence of control to regulators, customers, auditors or internal stakeholders.
Super intelligence (SI) was the most common sovereignty stress test: SI-related issues, including provider or governance failures, accounted for 44% of reported challenges, ahead of formal audit or regulatory events at 38%, significant provider changes at 35%, data-access or transfer issues at 33%, and government restrictions such as export controls at 30%.
The report identified an overconfidence gap: an average of 82% of respondents were very or extremely confident they could provide evidence of sovereign control, but only 26% of enterprises reached the Index's Leading Digital Sovereignty tier, and just 33% regularly test their capabilities. Leading-tier enterprises resolved their most testing challenge without material disruption 52% of the time, compared with 22% for establishing enterprises.
The Index measures evidence of control across responsibility, trace, constraint, intervention, legitimacy and exit, spanning super intelligence, technology, operations and data. Reported barriers included manual or time-consuming evidence collection (56%), fragmented evidence, dependence on third parties for records, and legacy systems or inconsistent standards (each 53%), and untested controls, recovery or exit arrangements (50%).
"Sovereignty should expand future choices, not restrict them," said Jonathan Adashek, IBM Senior Vice President and Chief Global Affairs Officer. Emmanuel Frenehard, Chief Digital Officer at Sanofi, said digital sovereignty is not a compliance checkbox but a business reality.
The research combined a review of 27 sources, 25 interviews with policymakers, regulators and experts, perspectives from 17 senior customer leaders, and a quantitative survey of 2,003 senior decision-makers at large enterprises across the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Saudi Arabia, India and Japan.
(Source: IBM)
Source: IBM
Published by GSM · USA (original Chinese edition)
Photo: 图：位于纽约 Madison Avenue 590号的 IBM 大楼。ajay_suresh 摄，CC BY 2.0，经 Wikimedia Commons。 / Photo: The IBM Building at 590 Madison Avenue, New York. By ajay_suresh, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
