Cloud Privacy : Easy to comply with as a SaaS Developer

Some people look at Cloud computing technologies with suspicion on its abilities to comply with effective privacy policies. This equally applies to a cloud software developer, when he tries to recommend the technology for his prospective clients. If you are a SaaS provider, you may have to sell for the Cloud provider also!. It works out something like this. As a SaaS provider, you may collect personal information relevant to extending the services as required. Now you have to assure the use of the personal information you collected from the end customer will comply with an internationally acceptable framework with reference to data privacy. As an organization or even as a specific application you can do this by adhering to the 'Safe Harbour' principles, such as, notice, choice, onward transfer, access, security, data integrity and enforcement.

Reproduced from the Directives provided by U.S.Department of Commerce, below
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Principle 1: Notice

Organizations must notify individuals about the purposes for which they collect and use information about them. They must provide information about how individuals can contact the organization with any inquiries or complaints, the types of third parties to which it discloses the information and the choices and means the organization offers for limiting its use and disclosure.

Principle 2: Choice

Organizations must give individuals the opportunity to choose (opt out) whether their personal information will be disclosed to a third party or used for a purpose incompatible with the purpose for which it was originally collected or subsequently authorized by the individual. For sensitive information, affirmative or explicit (opt in) choice must be given if the information is to be disclosed to a third party or used for a purpose other than its original purpose or the purpose authorized subsequently by the individual.

Principle 3: Onward Transfer (Transfers to Third Parties)

To disclose information to a third party, organizations must apply the notice and choice principles. Where an organization wishes to transfer information to a third party that is acting as an agent(1), it may do so if it makes sure that the third party subscribes to the safe harbor principles or is subject to the Directive or another adequacy finding. As an alternative, the organization can enter into a written agreement with such third party requiring that the third party provide at least the same level of privacy protection as is required by the relevant principles.

Principle 4: Access

Individuals must have access to personal information about them that an organization holds and be able to correct, amend, or delete that information where it is inaccurate, except where the burden or expense of providing access would be disproportionate to the risks to the individual's privacy in the case in question, or where the rights of persons other than the individual would be violated.

Principle 5 : Security

Organizations must take reasonable precautions to protect personal information from loss, misuse and unauthorized access, disclosure, alteration and destruction.

Principle 6 : Data integrity

Personal information must be relevant for the purposes for which it is to be used. An organization should take reasonable steps to ensure that data is reliable for its intended use, accurate, complete, and current.

Principle 7: Enforcement

In order to ensure compliance with the safe harbor principles, there must be (a) readily available and affordable independent recourse mechanisms so that each individual's complaints and disputes can be investigated and resolved and damages awarded where the applicable law or private sector initiatives so provide; (b) procedures for verifying that the commitments companies make to adhere to the safe harbor principles have been implemented; and (c) obligations to remedy problems arising out of a failure to comply with the principles. Sanctions must be sufficiently rigorous to ensure compliance by the organization. Organizations that fail to provide annual self certification letters will no longer appear in the list of participants and safe harbor benefits will no longer be assured.

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This is important even for small SaaS developers. Invariably a cloud application will be using some sort of authentication and authorization before allowing the access to its end customers, mostly provided by open id providers or at least an email id. Looking at the scope of cloud reaching out to all the seven continents, complying with the safe harbor principles is important. For example, assume you are a start-up getting into the business as a SaaS, leveraging some of the Cloud providers out there. Your application should spell out its privacy policy more rigourously than earlier. Remember, on the internet, your application represents your business.

If you are a product development service provider on the cloud technologies, recommend only the 'Safe Harbour Compliant' cloud provider , build the application clearly announcing the safe harbour policies '  and encourage your client to join the safe harbour framework.  Let us save ourselves and our clients from unwanted litigations.

For more details on what you mean privacy policy,  visit  http://www.export.gov/safeharbor/doc_safeharbor_index.asp