Data residency in Webex

The overall goal of data residency (formerly called data locality) in Webex is to store user data in regional data centers corresponding with the customer's location. This offering is available for new customers and provides the following high-level functionality:

• Our systems store your identities, such as email address and user ID, in your geographic region. Webex identity service processes client authentication requests locally in your region.

  Users can continue to meet with, message, and call users in other organizations across the globe without the need for separate accounts in foreign clusters. This means that Webex doesn't proliferate additional personal data elements

• Encryption keys for your users are created and stored in your organization's geographic region, and the Key Management Service (KMS) in your region handles requests for the keys to encrypt and decrypt spaces, messages, and content in Webex App.
• Encrypted user-generated content (meetings, messages, whiteboards, files and related metadata) is stored in the organization's geographic region.
• AI-generated content for both meetings and messages is stored in the same data center as the user-generated content. This ensures all data remains within the same geographic region.
• We store data about your organization, such as verified domains, preferences, and security settings, in one geographic region.
• Webex Partners in one region can create customer organizations in any region that we offer the services.
• Webex Hybrid Services are supported in the region, including Hybrid Directory, Hybrid Calendar, Hybrid Calling, Video Mesh, Hybrid Data Security, and Hybrid Messages.

Data center location of Webex services and user-generated content

Webex services and user-generated content	US	EU	Canada	UK	Japan	Australia	Singapore
Meetings*	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓
Common application data and identities	✓	✓	✓
Messaging	✓	✓
Calling**	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓
Encryption keys	✓	✓	✓
Hybrid Services (data security, calling, calendar, directory, video mesh, and messages)	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓
Webex Contact Center***	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓

* For the list of Webex Meetings data centers for the rest of world, refer to Webex Meetings global data centers.

** For the list of Webex Calling data centers for the rest of world, refer to the Webex Calling privacy data sheet.

*** For the list of Webex Contact Center data for the rest of world, refer to Data Locality in Webex Contact Center

Messaging data residency

During provisioning, the administrator who sets up an organization sees a Country Selector drop-down menu in Control Hub. We determine the geographic region in which the organization's data resides based on the mapping of the selected country to its corresponding DC. When you create a trial and select a country that maps to the European region for example, the organization's user-generated content is stored in the region as well as the user identities and encryption keys.

To determine which region a country maps to, you can download the following Microsoft Excel file and select the country name from the drop-down menu: https://www.cisco.com/c/dam/en/us/td/docs/voice_ip_comm/cloudCollaboration/wbxt/datalocality/CountryCodeGEOmapping.xlsx (The file begins to download immediately when you access the link.)

To enhance Webex Messaging data residency, we added a European geography (GEO) with data centers in Frankfurt and Amsterdam. The existing data centers in the United States of America continue to serve North America and the "Rest of World" (RoW).

Meetings Data residency

Meetings data is stored in a data center based on the time zone that you select for a Webex Meetings site during provisioning. For example, if you select a time zone from one of the European Union cities, then the Meetings data will reside in the data center in Frankfurt. Meetings data for other time zones outside of the European Union will reside in whichever data center is closest to the selected city.

At Cisco, we're committed to the protection and privacy of our customers’ data and personal information. The additional new data centers in Toronto, Canada, and Frankfurt, Germany, are part of this effort and complement existing data centers in the region, providing additional opportunities to host data in the EU and Canada. Since July 2021, new Webex customers from Europe can be provisioned to the data center in EU. Since July 2022, new Webex customers from Canada can be provisioned to the data center in Canada. We also have a migration plan in place to provide existing customers with more flexibility, and  to manage the data migration to your region.

Webex Calling residency

Calling data is stored in the data center closest to a customer’s principal place of business, as provided to Cisco by the Partner during the ordering process. Data residency is available in key markets in North America, Europe, and Asia and continue to expand to more regions. For the list of Webex Calling data centers, please refer to the Webex Calling Privacy Data Sheet.

Webex Contact Center residency

Webex Contact Center has achieved data residency in many countries we do business in North America, Europe and Asia and continues to expand. Based on the Country of Operation drop-down list that you selected on the Contact Center tab in the Setup wizard, the system creates the tenant in the closest data center based on the Country of Operation to Data Center mapping defined in Data Locality in Contact Center.

The following tables describe how data is shared, processed, and stored in various scenarios. Because Webex App enables collaboration amongst users in multiple organizations, the rules for storage and processing depend in some cases on the type of collaboration, and whether you enable communication with other organizations.

In each table, the following designations are used for data residency:

Global—Data may be handled at a Cisco data center in any location.

Limited—Data resides in the organization's geographic region, but copies may be created or processed in other regions as needed.

Restricted—Data resides in the organization's geographic region.

In addition to data sharing, processing, and storage described below, refer to Webex App & Webex Messaging Privacy Data Sheet for more details on how Webex App and Webex Messaging process personal data.

Table 1. Control Hub administration activities

Scenario	Data involved	Shared with	Processing		Storage
			US, EU	Rest of world	US, EU	Rest of world
Create a new customer organization.	Data collected or generated to manage a customer account, including administrative email addresses, organization id, claimed domains associated billing information	Cisco, partner	Restricted	Global	Restricted	Global
Use and manage a customer organization; add licensed services.	Operational data such as organization settings, subscription history, product catalog, usage data, analytics, stored CSV files	Cisco, partner, administrators	Restricted	Global	Restricted	Global
Create a new user.	Universally unique identifier (UUID)	—	Restricted	Global	Restricted	Global

Table 2. Webex App user sign-in and app configuration

Scenario	Data involved	Shared with	Processing		Storage
			US, EU	Rest of world	US, EU	Rest of world
Sign in to user account.	OAuth token	Identity service	Restricted	Limited	Restricted	Restricted
	Password	Identity service	Restricted	Restricted	Restricted	Restricted
Configure and use the Webex App.	Data such as mobile device ID, device name, IP address; settings such as time zone and locale; personal directory data such as first name, last name, avatar, phone number	Organization and partner administrators	Restricted	Global	Restricted	Limited
	Personal directory data such as first name, last name, avatar, phone number	Other users in the organization, or an external organization in the same region	Restricted	Global	Restricted	Limited
		Users from an external organization in a different region*	Limited	Global	Restricted	Limited

* Use Control Hub to block communication with external organizations to prevent this scenario. This blocks communication with all external organizations.

Table 3. Webex App user content generation

Scenario	Data involved	Shared with	Processing		Storage
			US, EU	Rest of world	US, EU	Rest of world
Send a message or file, create a space, flag messages.	User-generated content	Compliance officers	Restricted	Global	Restricted	Global
		Other users in the organization, or an external organization in the same region	Restricted	Global	Restricted	Global
		Users from an external organization in a different region*	Limited	Global	Limited	Global
	Encryption keys	Other users in the organization, or an external organization in the same region	Restricted	Limited	Restricted	Restricted
		Users from an external organization in a different region*	Limited	Limited	Restricted	Restricted
	Search indexes and derived metadata required to operate the service without "leaking" user-generated content or personally identifiable information outside of the region.	—	Restricted	Global	Restricted	Global
Share real-time media.	Voice, video, content share	Other users in the organization, or an external organization in the same region	Restricted	Global	Restricted	Limited
		Users from an external organization in a different region	Limited	Global	Limited	Limited
Record a meeting.	Meeting recordings stored in Webex Meetings	—	Restricted (meeting host’s DC region)	Restricted (meeting host’s DC region)	Restricted (meeting host’s DC region)	Restricted (meeting host’s DC region)
Create a whiteboard.	Whiteboard content (whiteboards between organizations are co-owned)	Other users in the organization, or an external organization in the same region	Restricted	Global	Restricted	Global
		Users from an external organization in a different region*	Limited	Global	Limited	Global

* Use Control Hub to block communication with external organizations to prevent this scenario. This blocks communication with all external organizations.

Table 4. Service integrations

Entity	Data involved	Shared with	Processing		Storage
			US, EU	Rest of world	US, EU	Rest of world
Calendar environment integration	Calendar meetings and events, some personally identifiable information	Membership of all spaces (within the user’s organization)	Limited	Global	Limited	Global
Developer APIs	API services for developers – transparent look-up and re-direct to the appropriate region’s services.	Global look-up In-region processing	Limited	Global	Limited	Global

We store content in the region of the organization that owns the space where the content appears. Ownership depends on the type of space:

• Group space—The owner is the organization of the person who created the space. We store content in the region of the owner organization.

• Space within a team—The organization of the person who created the team owns spaces created within the team. Spaces created outside of the team and then moved into the team retain their original ownership. We store content in the region of the space owner's organization.

• Conversation between two people (nongroup space)—If the people are in different organizations, each organization owns the content that its user posts. If the conversation includes a user from the North America/RoW GEO, we store the conversation content in the North America/RoW GEO.

• Space created by a bot—We assign ownership to the organization of the first non-bot participant and store the content in the region of the owner's organization.