Over 60 countries now have data sovereignty laws, a sharp rise from four years ago. The laws’ requirements vary considerably from country to country, promising to add greater turbulence to global business operations – raising cybersecurity risks, increasing compliance costs and impeding cross-border data flows. This article, the first of three on the topic, will examine localization laws’ requirements and survey 2021’s enforcement and fines. The second article in the series will detail compliance consequences, the effect on the global cloud services market and one international company’s model for addressing localization. The third article will discuss localization’s impacts on cybersecurity. See “Reconciling Data Localization Laws and the Global Flow of Information” (Oct. 11, 2017).