Asian Business Law Institute

December 2024

This is the first deliverable under the ASEAN Framework on Cross-border Cloud Computing project (Project) ABLI was commissioned to undertake. The Project was proposed by Malaysia and approved by ASEAN. The implementing agency is Malaysia Digital Economy Corporation, a government agency under the purview of Malaysia’s Ministry of Digital.

All deliverables of the Project have been endorsed at the 6th ASEAN Digital Ministers Meeting held in Hanoi, Vietnam from 15 to 16 January 2026.

This report proposes a legal solution in the form of a Trusted Data Corridor (TDC) to provide the legal assurance desired by commercial players while respecting the sovereign duties and obligations of states. Connecting physical data centers located in two or more jurisdictions, a TDC is designed to operate within globally recognized frameworks such as the Framework on Personal Data Protection established in the ASEAN and may be utilized to support a diverse range of business and technology use cases.