Geographic location and legal jurisdiction of the data center is the correct choice because the jurisdiction governs which laws apply and which authorities can compel access to data.

The geographic location and legal jurisdiction of the data center dictates data sovereignty requirements and cross border transfer rules and it determines how privacy laws and law enforcement requests will be handled. Those legal and regulatory factors can override technical and physical protections and they therefore have the largest impact on the security and confidentiality of payment data.

Geographic location and legal jurisdiction of the data center should be confirmed first through contractual commitments and compliance documentation and then you should validate physical and operational controls during audits and assessments.

Power resilience and environmental controls at the facility are important for availability and hardware protection but they do not address who can lawfully access or seize data under local law. That makes them secondary when choosing a single most important factor.

Network bandwidth capacity available at the site is primarily a performance and capacity consideration and not a core physical security or legal control for protecting payment data.

On site access controls and continuous surveillance systems are critical operational controls for preventing unauthorized entry and tampering and they must be verified. They are not the single top priority because even strong on site controls cannot prevent lawful government access under the governing jurisdiction.

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