Security vs. Compliance in the Cloud

Today, I'm handing over the reins to John Considine, Founder and CTO at CloudSwitch. John tackles security and compliance in the cloud and begins by stating: "Security is always top of mind for CIOs and CSOs when considering a cloud deployment. An earlier post described the main security challenges companies face in moving applications to the cloud and how CloudSwitch technology simplifies the process. In this post, I’d like to dig a little deeper into cloud security and the standards used to determine compliance."

To codify data security and privacy protection, the industry turns to auditable standards, most notably SAS 70 as well as PCI, HIPAA and ISO 27002. Each one comes with controls in a variety of categories that govern operation of a cloud provider’s data center as well as the applications you want to put there. But what does compliance really mean? For example, is SAS 70 type II good enough for your requirements, or do you need PCI? How can your company evaluate the different security claims and make a sound decision?

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