Sovereign mode is a feature toggle, not a certification badge

Altovar is clarifying a distinction that keeps getting blurred in sovereignty discussions: sovereign mode, a setting available in Auris, is a product posture, not a certification. Turning it on changes what the product does by default. It does not mean the deployment has earned Italy's ACN certification, Germany's BSI C5, France's SecNumCloud, or any claim of immunity from the US CLOUD Act.

What the toggle actually changes

Per Altovar's own product documentation, sovereign mode defaults off certain US-based social identity providers and SMS delivery routed through a US provider, along with a small set of related posture toggles. The exact list of what is affected for a given deployment lives in the product's configuration reference, not in marketing copy -- because the toggle is a setting, its scope is meant to be checked against current documentation rather than assumed from a one-line description.

Why a toggle is not a certification

ACN, BSI C5 and SecNumCloud are formal schemes run by national authorities, each requiring an independent audit against a published set of controls. Italy's Agenzia per la Cybersicurezza Nazionale certifies cloud services sold to the public sector. Germany's BSI runs the Cloud Computing Compliance Criteria Catalogue, known as C5. France's ANSSI runs SecNumCloud, widely regarded as the strictest of the three because it requires a provider to be both legally domiciled and operationally independent from non-EU influence. None of these is something a software vendor can confer on itself by shipping a configuration flag -- each requires a named auditor, a scope of assessment and a certificate with an expiry date.

Why this matters for buyers

Procurement teams evaluating data-sovereignty requirements sometimes read a vendor's default settings as equivalent to a certified guarantee. They are not the same claim. A buyer who needs SecNumCloud, C5 or ACN for a specific tender should ask the vendor for the certificate and its scope, not for a list of toggles. Altovar's own position is to keep these as separate facts: sovereign mode describes what the product does; certification describes what an independent auditor has verified.

Sources: SecNumCloud (Wikipedia), OVHcloud on EU security standards.