Beyond Borders: Why We’re Now Also Hosting Data in Canada

Good news for our Canadian partners: We can now offer Hypothesis hosting in Canada. Having all social annotation data housed within their borders helps Canadian schools comply with national, regional, and institutional data storage policies. Hypothesis will work the way it always has for Canadian users but, behind the scenes, all their data can now sit within Amazon Web Services data centers located in Canada.

Hypothesis is a social-impact organization with an open-source product, and we’ve always worked to be a part of global web and education communities. From the beginning, we have prioritized what’s in the best interest of our users; our ongoing focus is on being transparent, working for the public benefit, and being accessible. And, of course, we are dedicated to preserving privacy — especially when it comes to student data. For us, part of the ethos of openness is communicating to you, our partners, that we’re protecting your digital footprint; that your data is protected, and that you truly, fully own it. While we support data hosting guidance and regulations set by governments and institutions around the world, up till now all Hypothesis user data has been stored securely in one of our data centers in the United States.

Facilitating Canadian hosting is the first development in our larger project to expand where Hypothesis data resides — a push to locate it in the home countries or regions of our partners. Fortunately for us, the work that went into enabling this technical architecture for Canada gives us a replicable model for storing user information in secure data centers all around the world, aiding institutions in other countries with data location requirements. We’re excited to be setting out on this trek to further enable a global community of social learners.

If you are a current Hypothesis partner located in Canada and would like to transition to service with Canadian hosting, please connect with our Success team for assistance. Or, if you’re part of a school or other organization starting to explore social annotation with Canadian hosting, kindly reach out to us to start a conversation.