Startup InCountry is exiting stealth mode today with $7 million in seed funding as it launches its first data-residency-as-a-service offering, designed to help companies adhere to rules requiring personal data to be stored in the country from which it originates.

Caffeinated Capital and Felicis Ventures led the seed round, with participation from Ridge Ventures, Bloomberg Beta, Charles River Ventures, Global Founders Capital and a series of angel investors.

InCountry’s backers are convinced the startup has hit upon the ideal solution to an emerging data compliance problem. In recent years, as concerns about personal data privacy continue to rise, dozens of countries are insisting that internet firms store data on their citizens within their national borders. That’s all well and good for the citizens concerned, but for all but the largest companies, it can be a major headache because they lack the know-how and infrastructure to do it.

InCountry said the rules are often so confusing, not too mention constantly changing, that as many as 74% of companies operating in the EU still don’t meet its data residency requirements as stipulated under the General Data Protection Regulation introduced last year. And it’s not only the EU that insists on data being stored within its members’ borders. Other countries, including India and Russia, have recently introduced or are considering similar laws.

These laws simply cannot be ignored, since the EU, for example, is threatening companies with fines of hundreds of thousands of dollars if they don’t comply. But most companies lack the time, resources and domain expertise in order to adhere to new data residency laws, and that’s where InCountry believes it can help.

The company’s first product, InCountry Profile, is designed to help companies comply with laws on how user profile and registration information should be stored and maintained. The way the service works is simple enough: Data is housed in private data centers or with public cloud operators that operate within the country of origin, therefore ensuring compliance with data residency laws.

Data is also securely encrypted within the country of origin, and InCountry assumes some of the liability by insuring the data by up to three times the value of each customer’s spend. The company also provides software development kits in a range of popular programming languages, so that companies can easily access their customer data to build new apps and services.

Peter Yared, InCountry’s founder and chief executive officer, told SiliconANGLE the company is focusing on user profile and registration information first because it’s a wide category that applies to virtually every business on the internet.

“The rollout of GDPR last year in particular has focused attention on profile and registration information, and there are many additional regulations rolling out elsewhere, including here in California,” Yared said.

InCountry’s services seem useful because complying with data residency rules is incredibly tricky. The most obvious solution would seem to be simply to store data with a cloud provider located in the required country, but that’s risky because companies are not exempt from financial penalty or prosecution if they use cloud providers that claim to be compliant but in fact are not. Yared explained that this is exactly the problem he’s trying to fix.

“Rather than each company validating a data center in every country they operate in, we do that for them,” Yared said. “We also provide indemnification and cyber insurance. This enables companies to grow rapidly in new markets and mitigate their compliance risk to InCountry.”

InCountry has also partnered with several international law firms and other experts who help to ensure its customer’s data is properly hosted, processed, secured and regulated. Profile is up and running in 50 countries and will be joined by additional services for health, payment and transaction data in the coming months.

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