PR Newswire·Nov 11, 2026, 8:00 AM ET

IBM Digital Sovereignty Index: In the AI Era, Control Is No Longer Enough. Enterprises Must Prove it.

94% of surveyed enterprises faced at least one digital sovereignty challenge in the last three years, with 81% required to provide formal evidence of control.
AI-related issues, such as provider or governance failures, represented the most common sovereignty challenge at 44%, surpassing data-access issues, government restrictions, or formal audits.
A significant "overconfidence gap" exists where 82% of respondents claim high confidence in proving sovereign control, yet only 26% reached the Leading Digital Sovereignty tier.
Only 33% of enterprises regularly test their sovereignty capabilities, while leaders in the top tier are more than twice as likely to resolve challenges without material disruption.
The IBM Digital Sovereignty Index evaluates control across six dimensions: responsibility, trace, constraint, intervention, legitimacy, & exit.
Operational barriers to proving sovereignty include manual evidence collection (56%), fragmented systems (53%), & untested recovery arrangements (50%).
Research findings are based on a quantitative survey of 2,003 senior decision-makers across seven countries combined with qualitative interviews.