Think a minute about the security challenges involved in creating a health-centered social network. Or, more generally, any web application that has to handle sensitive user data. What if the database server becomes compromised? How do you make sure tha

A number of privacy laws and government regulations such as the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council (FFIEC), Basel II, Payment Card Industry (PCI), and the UK Contingency’s Act have specific stipulations regarding data access and handling and business continuity.

Therefore, before companies begin utilizing public cloud-based services they need to carefully evaluate a cloud-based vendor’s security and privacy practices including data protection, vulnerability management, physical and personnel security, availability, application security, incident response, and data privacy. They should understand who will have access to the data, where it will be located and managed from, how it will be secured, segregated and / or encrypted and what mechanisms are in place to recover from outages.