Evaluating Cloud Platforms for Middle East

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

In the Gulf countries, more than 53% of the cloud infrastructure tracked there is American. Iran, on the other hand, seems an exceptional case among all the area's nations, as it relies completely on a 100% regional cloud ecosystem. 89cloud centers throughout 22 nations 35%American business' share (31 centers) 53%Gulf dependence on U.S.

Click on any point to see information about the center, consisting of the running business, its nationality, and the year it was launched. Use the filters to focus on a particular citizenship, or search for a particular center or nation. Source: "Arabi Post" database of cloud service centers in the Middle East and North Africa (89 centers).

Within a couple of years, cloud service centers have actually shifted from a "technical alternative" for lowering server expenses into critical facilities for the state and the economy: e-government portals, payment and banking systems, health and education platforms, and the operation of huge data, expert system, and more. The current Iran war (2026) exposed a brand-new dimension: the cloud itself can be straight and physically targeted, as happened when Iranian drone strikes damaged Amazon AWS cloud service data centers in the UAE and Bahrain, triggering interruptions and service failures.

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However the significance of American and foreign companies does not stop at technical competitors or service quality; it extends to digital sovereignty and concerns of control over information for these countries and their various delicate sectors. American companies go through U.S. laws controling legal access to information, such as the CLOUD Act, raising questions about the limits of judicial ask for information even when it is kept outside the United States.

"CLOUD Act" (March 2018): Section 2713 clearly forces interactions and computing service providers to maintain and reveal customer data within their "possession, custody, or control, regardless of whether it is located within or outside the United States" validating the point above., as presented by U.S

At the exact same time, professionals gotten in touch with by "Arabi Post" warn of the dangers of concentrating agreements with American cloud service providers, and of the impact of "foreign jurisdiction" on privacy and security.

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citizens or citizens who interact with people or organizations in those countries where information centers run by American companies keep the information of those nations and their citizens. To understand the scope of this threat, it is essential to initially examine U.S. federal laws such as FISA Section 702 and the CLOUD Act, which governs U.S.

Although the CLOUD Act grants Washington broad authority to gain access to data saved in data centersthe massive facilities utilized by companies to store and procedure informationin some cases, under the Act, U.S. authorities may be needed to alert the government of the nation worried that there is a legal basis compelling access to that data.

The U.S. government could also penalize or target any U.S. citizen who takes part in monetary deals with that country or sends out cash transfers to people there. Abu Al-Saad likewise states that if a conflict were to occur between that nation 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 monetary and banking services. In the context of the security threats linked to nations' reliance on American data centers, another point also emergesone that Ibtihal Abu Al-Saad considers the most crucial and most harmful: the U.S. legal and intelligence tool called "National Security Letters" (NSLs).

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federal intelligence and security agencies. Under these letters, U.S. authorities have the ability to force major innovation companies to turn over delicate data related to residents or nations. Washington could, for example, force Amazon to open information records belonging to users in Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Bahrain, or elsewhere, while "imposing a rigorous nondisclosure order that avoids the innovation company from alerting the Bahraini government or the targeted people that this access has happened.