A Getting Started Guide to Data Center Compliance

The way an enterprise designs, operates, and audits its data center is critical to meeting the various compliance mandates it faces, such as HIPAA, PCI DSS, and GDPR.

This article is a guide to data center compliance, including the role of the data center in a compliance strategy and what data center operators and customers need to do to ensure data center compliance.

Data Centers and Compliance: An Overview

The data center isn’t always at the center of compliance discussions, as the major compliance frameworks don’t include specific rules for the data center—not surprising, as compliance standards don’t typically focus on a specific technology or technology area. Instead, they aim to establish guidelines and best practices that organizations must follow, regardless of the technology they employ.

That said, any organization that uses a data center and adheres to compliance standards must ensure that their data center operations are in compliance. If your data center is not compliant, then the entire organization is generally not compliant.

For example, GDPR, an EU regulation designed to protect personal data, contains rules governing when and how companies can transfer data outside the EU, which means that companies that operate multiple data centers (some within the EU and some outside the EU) must manage how personal data flows between their various data centers.

As another example, HIPAA, the U.S. healthcare regulation, has established rules requiring adequate physical protection of sensitive medical data. Therefore, any data center hosting data subject to HIPAA must implement reasonable physical security controls.

Strategies for ensuring data center compliance

Because compliance rules often don’t include specific requirements related to data centers, it can be challenging to ensure your data center supports rather than hinders compliance strategies.

As a result, determining how to apply compliance standards to the data center can be difficult. There is no simple checklist that an enterprise can follow to ensure that the data center adheres to whatever compliance rules it needs to meet.

However, there are several steps that enterprises and data center operators can take to support data center compliance:

1. Adhere to the voluntary compliance framework

Several existing compliance frameworks have rules that no organization is required to follow, but can help establish a healthy foundation for cybersecurity and data privacy. Prime examples of such voluntary compliance frameworks include SOC 2 and ISO 27001.

Choosing to adhere to these or similar voluntary frameworks does not guarantee that your data center will also comply with regulatory frameworks such as HIPAA or GDPR, but voluntary compliance allows you to establish best practices and identify security gaps that could lead to violations of non-voluntary compliance requirements.

2. Perform voluntary audits

Likewise, conducting voluntary audits is a good way to identify gaps in data center operations that could lead to compliance issues.

Data center operators can use their own internal audit team to conduct the audit, or they can outsource the audit to an external audit provider. (In some cases, an external audit is required to prove that you meet the compliance standards, but an internal audit may also be permitted, depending on the compliance certification you are seeking.)

3. Document assets and processes

The more information you share with auditors and regulators, the easier it will be to prove that your data center is compliant. From seemingly mundane information like data center cable labels to higher-stakes data like cybersecurity incident response operations, you want to keep track of everything your data center has and does.

4. Consider outsourcing data center operations

If your business is struggling to ensure data center compliance, outsourcing data center operations may be a wise option, allowing you to hand over the responsibility for compliance to a third party. Of course, make sure that the agreement you reach with the data center outsourcing company includes any compliance standards that need to be met.

5. Consider the cloud

When all else fails, moving workloads to the public cloud can simplify compliance. While public cloud providers cannot guarantee that your workloads are compliant in all respects, they do assume the compliance responsibilities associated with protecting the physical infrastructure.

Of course, moving to the cloud comes with its own set of trade-offs, including challenges like reduced control over infrastructure. But for enterprises struggling to achieve compliance in a private data center, the cloud can be a reasonable choice.

Make your data center the cornerstone of compliance

For most enterprises, data centers are just one component of compliance operations. But given the foundational role they play in hosting workloads, data centers are often critical. That’s why it’s wise for enterprises that rely on data centers to take proactive steps to meet compliance requirements—such as voluntarily submitting to audits or, in some cases, outsourcing data center operations to companies that are more familiar with data center compliance requirements.