R&S®Trusted Gate - Secure Glocalization by Rohde & Schwarz Cybersecurity

Protecting business data—especially in modern collaboration platforms like SharePoint Online—has become a central challenge for an increasing number of companies, driven by the need to prevent breaches, protect reputation, and counter industrial espionage by competitors or state actors. The pressure is amplified by rapidly expanding global privacy regulation and the practical implications of cross-border data processing. A key trigger highlighted is the European Court of Justice decision of 16 July 2020 invalidating the EU–US Privacy Shield (Case C-311/18), underscoring insufficient protection for personal data processed in the US against access by US authorities such as the NSA and FBI.

Alongside GDPR, newer laws like California’s CCPA (effective January 1, 2020) and Singapore’s PDPA (passed 2013) reflect a worldwide shift toward stricter personal data governance, often including data residency obligations that constrain where data may be stored (e.g., EU, Russia, UAE, UK, Switzerland, China). Two compounding complexities are the extraterritorial reach of regulations (GDPR applying based on where individuals live and business occurs) and the reality that multinational firms must reconcile fragmented, sometimes conflicting, requirements—without sacrificing admin usability and end-user experience.

As companies accelerate cloud adoption, traditional perimeter-focused security becomes insufficient for SaaS platforms that organizations do not fully operate. The text advocates data-centric security: protecting the data object itself via reduction of cloud-stored data, compliant localization, and encryption/obfuscation. Rohde & Schwarz Cybersecurity’s R&S®Trusted Gate – Secure Glocalization addresses this by intercepting collaboration-platform storage, leaving only “stub” files with limited metadata in SharePoint while encrypting, sharding, and storing payloads across defined storage backends (on-premises or software-defined storage). This enables unified global collaboration while enforcing local data residency and sovereignty, supported by microservice scalability, flexible key management, and even full-text search over encrypted content via a secure index.

• On 16 July 2020, the European Court of Justice ruled the EU–US Privacy Shield invalid in Case C-311/18.
• For personal data processed in the US, there is insufficient protection against access by US security authorities such as the NSA and FBI.
• The California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) came into force on January 1, 2020.
• Singapore passed the Personal Data Protection Act (PDPA) in 2013.
• An increasing number of regulations require data residency, obligating selected data to be stored within specific national or regional borders.
• GDPR applies to organizations in EU member states and to organizations doing business with EU residents.
• Rohde & Schwarz Cybersecurity consolidated cybersecurity expertise into a specialized subsidiary in 2016 after strategic acquisitions.
• R&S®Trusted Gate intercepts communication to platform storage and leaves the cloud platform working with a stub/virtual file containing limited metadata but not document content.
• Payload files are encrypted, cut into shards, and stored in one or more storage systems defined by the organization.
• R&S®Trusted Gate – Secure Glocalization includes a dedicated search engine that enables full-text search in encrypted documents by creating a secure index.

• “Traditional cybersecurity typically focuses on protecting networks, systems, applications, servers and endpoints in general.”
• “Instead, the focus is on protecting the data itself even in potentially insecure environments.”
• “Data-centric security focuses on the data objects and payloads rather than storage and transmission elements.”
• “Key strategies for data-centric security include the avoidance/reduction of data in cloud systems, regulatory compliant localization of data storage, and encryption and/or obfuscation…”
• “The actual goal of a global communication platform, however, is not achieved at all; international, cross-regional collaboration is therefore not possible…”
• “End users… continue to interact with the native cloud or collaboration platform without any friction.”
• “The hosting cloud platform will only work with a stub version of the actual file… but no actual document content.”
• “Even compromising a single SDS would not lead to a data breach, as individual shards are incomplete by design…”
• “The system will show its full strength though, when it is used by mature organizations that have global policies…”
• “R&S®Trusted Gate - Secure Glocalization avoids this typical shortcoming by implementing a full text search in encrypted documents…”