Open Circle launches free sovereignty check for companies

Zurich, 12 September 2025 – In the current political climate, digital sovereignty is more important than ever. Zurich-based IT solutions developer and service provider Open Circle has therefore launched a sovereignty check that Swiss companies can use to assess how (un)dependent their IT is on American tech giants and other providers.

Whether Swiss SMEs or public institutions – wherever sensitive data plays a central role, a sovereign IT infrastructure is crucial. But where does my organisation stand on the path to digital self-determination? To help IT managers and executives answer this question, Open Circle has published a sovereignty check for companies. With just a few clicks, you can find out:

• how well your organisation is prepared for cyber attacks, global crises and supply bottlenecks
• how strong the lock-in to individual IT providers or platforms is
• how well your IT strategy is geared towards digital independence

The sovereignty check is available on the Open Circle website: Check Digital Sovereignty – Open Circle AG

‘Many companies underestimate how dependent they are on individual providers and how significant digital lock-in actually is,’ says Stefan Escher, CEO of Open Circle. ‘With our new digital sovereignty check, they can test this without obligation and find out for themselves how they can gain more control over their data and systems.’

The check is based on a self-assessment of various aspects of the company’s IT, for example: ‘I know in which country my company data is stored’ or ‘I can move my business applications from the public cloud to the private cloud or on-premise environment.’ It takes less than five minutes to complete. Open Circle then provides an evaluation including comprehensive recommendations on how participants can independently improve their digital sovereignty with simple measures. Participation in the sovereignty check is free of charge and non-binding.

Background

Sectors such as healthcare, asset management, law and the public sector face particular challenges: strict security requirements, growing regulatory requirements and increasing pressure to master digital transformation. Many organisations are outsourcing this responsibility and sourcing critical technologies from a small number of US providers.

The fact is that anyone who obtains all their services from a single source becomes dependent on that source and thus vulnerable to supply bottlenecks, cyber attacks or hardware backdoors. The federal administration, for example, relies heavily on Microsoft collaboration applications instead of open source solutions and is rightly criticised for this time and again. On the one hand, this leads to higher costs and dependencies, and on the other hand, it also leads to an increased security risk. Unlike open source alternatives, the common applications used by large corporations do not disclose their source code, which means that anyone could find errors in them. What’s more, anyone who uses Microsoft Teams or cloud solutions, for example, is exposing themselves to the arbitrary power of the US government, which is currently becoming increasingly apparent. Digital sovereignty, i.e. the independence and freedom of choice that is otherwise so sacred to the Swiss people, is under threat.