The chemical industry is under considerable pressure: plant control systems and IT are converging, yet security architectures often fail to keep pace. Under the NIS-2 Implementation Act and the KRITIS Framework Act, management is also liable for the resilience and IT security of the entire supply chain. At the same time, every minute counts after a cyberattack: The faster systems are back up and running, the less critical the production downtime becomes.
A data center in Europe alone does not solve this problem if the operator is subject to the U.S. CLOUD Act. As a European hyperscaler*, STACKIT provides sovereign infrastructure: the operating company, contractual partners, and data centers are all exclusively subject to European law. The result is an auditable, sovereign cloud platform that drastically reduces your audit workload and effectively protects your intellectual property.
Under NIS-2 and the KRITIS umbrella law, executive management is personally liable for IT resilience and must provide comprehensive proof of security across the entire supply chain. Vague security promises from cloud providers are no longer sufficient during audits and create significant compliance risks.
As corporate IT and plant control systems become increasingly integrated, cyberattacks can quickly trigger drastic production shutdowns. In regulated industries, the financial losses resulting from a delayed restart far exceed the pure IT costs.
Even data centers in Germany are not protected from extraterritorial access under the U.S. CLOUD Act if the operator is a U.S. company.Without a purely European operator jurisdiction, there is a risk of the unintended outflow of critical intellectual property, patents, and research data.
Demonstrating compliance in the supply chain requires hard facts for CISOs, procurement teams, and auditors. STACKIT provides a robust compliance package with a defined scope, tested on the Schwarz Group’s business workloads:
Ensure your business can resume operations within European jurisdictions through a combined ecosystem of recovery (Veeam on STACKIT), robust crisis communication (Wire), and a sovereign alternative workspace (openDesk).
Protect networked environments with the Zscaler Zero Trust Exchange on STACKIT, hosted in German data centers (available as of July 28, 2026).
Use the officially recognized infrastructure platform RISE with SAP on STACKIT to migrate your core ERP and supply chain processes to a future-proof, sovereign cloud architecture.
Manage ITSM, incident, and change processes with the highest level of security via ServiceNow on STACKIT as a fully managed service for your IT and operations teams.
Protect your production-related IT with immutable backups and separate recovery environments. Regularly documented recovery drills serve as direct evidence for regulatory authorities, auditors, and customers.
Aggregate and analyze data for CSRD and LkSG in compliance with the GDPR on a modern delta lake architecture. This enables you to fulfill all reporting requirements for supply chains and sustainability in a transparent and legally compliant manner.
Protect your formulas, process instructions, and critical research data from unauthorized access. Your data is guaranteed to be stored and processed in Europe, without third countries having any legal influence over it.
Process massive amounts of data from equipment and sensors in real time for predictive maintenance. Analyze maintenance data systems and time-sensitive sensor readings on a high-performance, scalable cloud infrastructure.
Minimize attack vectors at the interface between enterprise IT and manufacturing. Strictly segment access to command and control systems according to the zero-trust principle to protect critical, wired network infrastructures.
Talk to our industry expert and let’s plan your comprehensive cloud strategy together. We understand your challenges—from legacy OT to intellectual property protection.
“The chemical industry is under unprecedented pressure to transform. Anyone who wants to make the leap to the smart factory must never risk their most valuable asset: their proprietary formulation know-how. True digital resilience can only be achieved with an infrastructure that combines the highest level of OT security with irrefutable European data sovereignty.”
Holger Kottmann
Senior Sales Manager • Chemicals, Pharma & Construction
*As a European hyperscaler recognized by SAP as a suitable infrastructure platform for RISE with SAP, we operate our infrastructure exclusively in European data centers without being subject to the U.S. CLOUD Act. Certifications according to the international ISO 27001 standard—which serves as a fundamental security framework—as well as the BSI C5 Type 2 certification built upon it and GDPR compliance form the verifiable foundation for data management that meets European legal requirements.
