The use of colocation services as a means of increasing productivity and reducing cost has become an ever-growing reality in today’s business world. More and more global enterprises are outsourcing their IT needs to cloud services and colocation centers as a means of reducing IT costs, increasing bandwidth and productivity and ensuring a higher standard in disaster recovery protection.
A recent DCD Intelligence report states that almost a quarter of all data center usage is outsourced today. With the growth in outsourcing data center usage, the telecommunications industry is seeing an increase in demand for security measures and compliance. In fact, the same report claims that 37 percent of these users are inclined to fire their data center provider if security compliances are not met adequately.
Improvements In Cloud Security
The last five years have seen a proliferation of measures to increase the security of cloud usage and data centers, along with new standards for data center compliance. Some recent developments in security have included improved scanning engines, cloud monitoring services, and a higher degree of user control. Data centers are no longer relying on firewalls for protection. Rather, new IT technologies have found ways to integrate these security measures directly into the applications and data layers themselves. We have reached the point where entire applications can be placed behind intelligent learning engines designed to monitor and detect any abnormal or suspicious activity within the application. Furthermore, most applications are now being created to be able to run both within and outside of the network, further ensuring security protection for users. Today’s internal security solutions include IPS/IDS and data loss prevention.
Common Compliance Requirements for Data Centers
Most of today’s data and colocation centers are required to meet certain compliance regulations. The most common of these compliance requirements are SOX, HIPAA, PCI/DSS, and FISMA. Here we will explain each of these in more detail.
- SOX Compliance – Requires all publicly held companies to have established internal controls and procedures for financial reporting to reduce the possibility of corporate fraud.
- HIPAA Compliance – The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act requires any company dealing with protected health information (PHI) to ensure that all required physical, network, and process security measures are established and adhered to.
- PCI/DSS Compliance – The Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard is a security compliance requirement for any company that handles branded credit cards from the major credit card companies (Visa, MasterCard, American Express, etc.). Designed to reduce credit card fraud, these compliance standards do not apply to those companies that deal with private label credit cards.
- FISMA Compliance – The Federal Information Security Management Act, as part of the Electronic Government Act, is a comprehensive framework intended to safeguard government information, operations, and assets against man-made threats such as terrorism and hacking. Under this act, an annual review of information security programs is mandated.
Compliance requirement training should be part of a data center’s training regimen to ensure that all employees, company management personnel and IT experts are up to date on changes to the various compliance requirements.
Finding a colocation center in compliance with security requirements
Enterprises looking to outsource their IT needs to a data or colocation center should take all necessary precautions to ensure that their IT and data center teams are up to date and trained in adherence to the latest in security compliance regulations. Call (888) 865-4261 to speak with Volico data center representative to learn more about data center security and compliance requirements.
