2026 Salesforce Data Trend #4: U.S. CLOUD Act Spurs Sovereignty Concerns

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In this blog post series, we present our seven predictions that will redefine how enterprises secure, scale, and protect their Salesforce data in 2026. This is the fourth blog post in the series, and you can read the last trend here. Join us on January 29th when Odaseva CEO Sovan Bin will host a webinar to explain each trend in more detail, and answer audience questions. Register here.

2026 Salesforce Data Trend #4: Enterprises will proactively address C-suite sovereignty concerns as the U.S. CLOUD Act makes headlines

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What: In 2026, the intensifying global scrutiny over the extraterritorial reach of the U.S. CLOUD Act, highlighted by Microsoft's acknowledgment of its obligation to surrender EU customer data, will force a critical shift among global enterprises using U.S.-based Big Tech clouds like Salesforce. For enterprises and non-U.S. government agencies, the U.S. CLOUD Act poses questions about exposure risks to confidential and sensitive information, such as trade secrets, financial records, and M&A details.

Note - The U.S. CLOUD Act (2018) is a law granting U.S. authorities the power to compel American-based technology providers to disclose customer data in their custody, control, or possession regardless of where that data is physically stored globally.

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Why: The issue gained prominence after Microsoft acknowledged its legal obligation under the CLOUD Act to comply with U.S. warrants, even for EU customer data stored on European servers. This extraterritorial reach will raise questions among global companies running on platforms owned and operated by U.S. tech companies. If a company like Microsoft cannot guarantee data sovereignty, executives will raise concerns that other companies (like Salesforce) may take the same position if compelled.

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How: Concerns about data sovereignty will transition from a compliance debate to a Zero Trust security imperative, driving demand for solutions that place the customer, not the cloud vendor, in absolute control of encryption keys. 

This trend will spur the widespread adoption of client-side encryption and "sovereignty vault" architectures, where sensitive data is stored outside the vendor's legal control (and crucially, outside their technical capability to decrypt), effectively allowing organizations to mitigate CLOUD Act exposure and ensure data remains subject only to their local jurisdiction's rules. 

This move will prioritize technological, contractual guarantees over blindly trusting vendors that have access to sensitive data. The future of data governance relies on the ability to unilaterally decide who can access and view critical information, regardless of the cloud platform's location.

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We’ll be publishing the next trend soon, stay tuned! Don’t forget to register for our January 29th webinar, hosted by Odaseva CEO Sovan Bin, to learn more about each trend in more detail.

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