Content Insights Tip #74 | GDPR and Vercel Functions: Ensuring European Data Compliance

In today's digital landscape, data privacy isn’t just an afterthought—it’s a necessity. With regulations like the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in force across Europe, we as developers must ensure that their applications handle data in a compliant manner. One key area to consider is where your serverless functions run. Vercel Functions offers an elegant solution to this problem by letting you configure the execution regions of your functions, which can help you adhere to GDPR requirements.

Understanding Vercel functions and regions

Vercel Functions are an important part of building fast, globally distributed applications. By default, these functions execute in the Washington, D.C., USA (iad1) region. However, if your application revolves around Europe, running your functions in a European region helps reduce latency and can also help comply with GDPR mandates by keeping traffic within Europe.

Please note that some data will always pass through Vercel’s data centres in USA. To ensure the DDoS prevention system works properly, IP addresses (among other information) are transmitted. Be sure to mention it to your security officer!

The importance of geographic location

Latency and Performance:
The physical distance between your function and its data source affects response times. By selecting a region closer to your data (or your users), you ensure faster interactions.
Data Sovereignty and GDPR:
GDPR emphasizes the protection of personal data and often requires that data remain within certain geographical boundaries. By configuring your functions to execute in European regions, you not only improve performance for local users but also help ensure that data processing complies with GDPR standards.

Configuring Regions for GDPR Compliance

Vercel offers three ways to set your function execution regions: using the Vercel dashboard, modifying the vercel.json configuration file or the Vercel CLI. In my personal opinion, it doesn't matter what you use, as long as it's consistent. For more information, see the documentation.

Redundancy and failover

For projects that demand high availability—especially those on Pro or Enterprise plans—Vercel offers multi-region deployments. This approach boosts performance with regional redundancy and automated failover. In the event of an outage in your default region, Vercel can reroute traffic to a backup region defined in your configuration, for example:

{ "functionFailoverRegions": ["dub1", "fra1"] }

This configuration is particularly beneficial for high-availability applications, ensuring continuous data processing even if one region encounters issues.

Please note that the failover feature is available only on Enterprise plans and must be enabled through the Vercel dashboard. By default, Vercel selects a location near your default region, which might not necessarily be in Europe. If a European location is crucial for your application, be sure to extend your vercel.json file with the property functionFailoverRegions and explicitly specify the desired regions.

GDPR and Regional Settings: Key Takeaways

Data Localization:
Configuring your functions to run in European regions helps keep user data within the region, addressing one of the key compliance requirements of GDPR.
Performance optimization:
Running functions closer to your European user base minimizes latency, enhancing the overall user experience.
Redundancy and reliability:
Advanced configurations such as failover regions provide an extra layer of reliability, ensuring that your application remains operational even during regional outages.
Flexible configuration options:
Whether you prefer using the dashboard, editing vercel.json, or leveraging the CLI, Vercel offers flexible ways to set your preferred regions for function execution.

Conclusion

Incorporating Vercel Functions with a focus on regional configuration is not just a technical decision, it’s a strategic one for ensuring compliance with GDPR. By choosing European regions for your functions, you align with legal requirements, improve user experience, and maintain robust performance standards.

Whether you’re a developer focused on optimizing latency or a business striving for regulatory compliance, Vercel’s flexible regional settings provide a powerful tool to meet your needs. Embrace these settings to keep your data secure, your users happy, and your applications compliant in an increasingly regulated digital world.

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