Colocation And The Compliance Puzzle

There are several benefits of a hardware colocation service -- but how does colocation help with compliance? Read on to discover how companies are using colocation setups to achieve their goals in meeting the tough standards central to their industries.

Control of Data

One of the overarching themes of data compliance in industries like healthcare and finance is that companies have to have control of their data. That can mean more than one thing. They have to control stored data and keep it from leaking out to the public, but they also have to have active control of what is in their systems to bring it back for audits, evaluations and other kinds of discovery.

Colocation services can help funnel critical business information into repositories that help support retrieval. They will help companies have a system for actively using their data in gaining control of the information they've generated through core operations.

Location of Data

Compliance also contemplates the location of business data, but again, this can really have two meanings. There is the question of where data centers are physically, whether they're a single office in the country or stuck in the middle of a busy urban office building. But for many, the more critical question is "where" that data is in a digital structure. Is it corralled by firewalls, VPN structures, and other security infrastructure?

Colocation companies can offer this kind of comprehensive security on an economy of scale. And they can assure customers that their data storage systems comply with those tough standards.

Specific Industry Standards

In some cases, compliance legislation has become the bogeyman of private companies. Just utter the word HIPAA, an acronym for the "health insurance portability and accountability act," in medical circles and you'll get a series of gasps. Certain types of legislation like Sarbanes-Oxley are similarly frustrating in the financial world.

Businesses need the core resources to take on these standards and conquer them. They need means-tested systems with attention to detail from professional teams that work around the clock to prevent an embarrassing slip-up. It's not as easy as just "putting in a data center" and letting things go. Compliance means continual observation and change.

By bringing specific expertise to their systems, professional colocation companies, like Cologix, can help customers make sure they know what the boundaries are for these different types of standards and how to achieve compliance every day.