Digital Realty Completes SOC 2 Audit

Digital Realty Trust has completed a SOC 2 Type 2 examination of its U.S. data center operations using guidelines from the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA), the company said today. SOC 2 is a mechanism for service organizations, including data center providers such as Digital Realty, to report on the design and effectiveness of their security policies, communications, procedures and monitoring based on detailed criteria.

Digital Realty is the largest operator of data center facilities, with more than 100 properties across the globe spanning more than 19 million square feet of mission-critical space.

"As one of the largest data center providers with a commitment to excellence and transparency, we took an early start in the industry to undertake this extensive effort, validating our security procedures and making those results available to our broad base of customers," said Dave Caron, Senior Vice President, Portfolio Management at Digital Realty. "This report gives our customers a higher level of confidence that our security protocols are being enforced to ensure their mission critical computing systems are protected."

SOC 2 is the latest in a series of data center audits designed to provide customers with information on the internal controls put in place by data center providers.

"With the retirement of SAS 70 last year and increasing deployment of cloud and other outsourced solutions, we see the growing importance of SOC 2 reports for customers to help them monitor the effectiveness of their service providers' security and other operational controls," said David Schirmacher, Senior Vice President, Operations for Digital Realty. "SOC 2 reports benefit customers by providing detailed information on controls and auditor testing to address a predefined set of detailed control criteria. For this reason, we decided to be proactive and complete our inaugural SOC 2 security examinations."