Comparing Cloud Platforms for the Middle East

Data gotten and analyzed by "Arabi Post" on the map of cloud service centers and regions (information centers) in the Middle East and North Africa revealed that the area's countries rely heavily on American companies for cloud services. The data reveals the existence of around 31 American centers, the majority of them in Gulf nations, while the number of centers owned by Chinese companies reached about 7.

In the Gulf nations, more than 53% of the cloud facilities tracked there is American. Source: "Arabi Post" database of cloud service centers in the Middle East and North Africa (89 centers).

Within a few years, cloud service centers have actually moved from a "technical option" for lowering server costs into critical facilities for the state and the economy: e-government websites, payment and banking systems, health and education platforms, and the operation of big data, synthetic intelligence, and more. The recent Iran war (2026) revealed a brand-new measurement: the cloud itself can be directly and physically targeted, as taken place when Iranian drone strikes damaged Amazon AWS cloud service information centers in the UAE and Bahrain, causing disturbances and service outages.

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However the significance of American and foreign companies does not stop at technical competition or service quality; it encompasses digital sovereignty and concerns of control over information for these nations and their various sensitive sectors. American companies go through U.S. laws regulating legal access to data, such as the CLOUD Act, raising concerns about the limits of judicial ask for information even when it is saved outside the United States.

"CLOUD Act" (March 2018): Section 2713 clearly forces communications and calculating company to preserve and reveal customer data within their "possession, custody, or control, no matter whether it lies within or outside the United States" verifying the point above. (Click an image to view it full size.) This dependence likewise converges with the context of cross-border intelligence event under structures such as FISA Area 702, as presented by U.S

At the same time, specialists gotten in touch with by "Arabi Post" alert of the risks of concentrating agreements with American cloud provider, and of the effect of "foreign jurisdiction" on personal privacy and security. Between concerns over sovereignty and the market's need for ready-made infrastructure, the significance of information localization policies and the limitations of cross-border data streams is growing, as talked about in global reports such as those by the OECD.

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citizens or residents who engage with people or companies in those nations where information centers operated by American companies store the information of those countries and their people. To understand the scope of this danger, it is necessary to initially analyze U.S. federal laws such as FISA Area 702 and the CLOUD Act, which governs U.S.

Although the CLOUD Act grants Washington broad authority to gain access to data kept in data centersthe massive infrastructure used by business to shop and procedure informationin some cases, under the Act, U.S. authorities might be required to alert the federal government of the nation concerned that there is a legal basis engaging access to that data.

The U.S. government could likewise punish or target any U.S. resident who engages in monetary deals with that country or sends out money transfers to individuals there. Abu Al-Saad also states that if a disagreement were to take place in between that country and Washington, the United States could suspend its data storage services for that country and justify doing so.

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This would affect all sectors, including financial and banking services. In the context of the security threats linked to countries' dependence on American data centers, another point likewise emergesone that Ibtihal Abu Al-Saad thinks about the most essential and most dangerous: the U.S. legal and intelligence tool understood as "National Security Letters" (NSLs).

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federal intelligence and security agencies. Under these letters, U.S. authorities have the ability to force significant innovation companies to hand over sensitive information related to citizens or nations. Washington could, for example, force Amazon to open data records coming from users in Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Bahrain, or in other places, while "imposing a stringent nondisclosure order that avoids the innovation company from informing the Bahraini federal government or the targeted individuals that this gain access to has actually happened.