Nearly nine in ten C-suite leaders in Singapore believe a data sovereignty failure could cost them their jobs, according to new research from Everpure. Yet the same report finds that Singapore has the largest share of enterprises operating without a formal strategy to manage that risk of any market surveyed.

Everpure’s Global Data Sovereignty Report 2026, based on a survey of 2,100 enterprise leaders across eight countries conducted by Vanson Bourne, puts the Singapore figure at 89%, compared with 88% globally. A further 89% of Singapore respondents said they worry about the financial and reputational damage a failure could cause their organisation.

A gap between concern and preparedness

Despite that level of concern, 81% of Singaporean enterprises have no formal data sovereignty strategy in place, by far the highest proportion of any market in the survey, against 64% globally. Visibility is another weak point: 63% of Singapore respondents said they lack full visibility into who can access, control and manage their data, and 68% have no mitigation plan for geopolitical data exfiltration or service disruption.

The report also found that 86% of Singapore respondents are willing to compromise on advanced features to work with a local or sovereign provider, and 41% are already limiting their use of SaaS platforms that depend on non-domestic infrastructure.

Treating sovereignty as more than compliance

“Singapore is one of the most digitally mature markets in the world, yet 81% of enterprises here are operating without a formal data sovereignty strategy,” said Nathan Hall, VP and General Manager APJ at Everpure. “That gap between awareness and action is the real risk. Sovereignty is not simply about where data sits — it is about knowing who can access it, which jurisdictions apply, and whether critical services could be disrupted.”

Rahiel Nasir, Research Director and Lead Analyst for Worldwide Digital Sovereignty at IDC, said the issue has moved well beyond compliance teams. “Digital sovereignty has moved from a compliance conversation to a critical board-level concern,” he said. “The challenge for executives is not just about knowing where their data are hosted. It is about being in total control of all data access and transfers, guaranteed protection against extra-territorial data requests, and managing IT and vendor risks in light of geopolitical uncertainties.”

Everpure is pitching what it calls a “sovereignty by design” approach, applying governance and controls according to the risk level of each dataset, application and workload rather than treating sovereignty as a single national compliance checkbox.