Google Apps, Cloud Data Centers & SSAE 16 Audits: Ensuring Security?

By samdizzy

SSAE 16 Audits

No doubt, SSAE 16 compliance has been gaining momentum among cloud data center providers. Plus, Google Apps and Microsoft Office 365 have been locked in a PR war, trying to communicate how their respective cloud services adhere to a growing list of compliance mandates and government requirements.

According to Google, the SSAE 16 compliance audit, performed by Ernst & Young, covers:

Gradually, fear, uncertainty and doubt (FUD) about public cloud infrastructure seems to be dissipating. Data centers and online services still fail from time to time — last week’s GoDaddy outage being a prime example. But corporate CIOs and small business owners seem to be realizing that massive cloud services providers (CSPs) are better equipped than traditional businesses to design and operate secure, scalable data centers.

Talkin’ Cloud does not want to paint SSAE 16 as a “guarantee” that a data center can meet customers’ security and privacy concerns. But one look at server spending seems to indicate that more and more IT spending involves cloud data center build-outs rather than on-premises server deployments.