It’s not uncommon that I get questions about data security and privacy in Visual Studio Online. It’s something we take very seriously, design for, test for and focus on.
Jeff Beehler, who runs our compliance team, did a talk at TechEd Europe this week on our data protection approach. As he worked to put together his presentation, he also put together a VS Online Data Protection document to share the information even more broadly. You’ll find it hosted along with other key service documents (like our service level agreement) on the VS Online support page.
In addition to working to describe our approach to data protection, we have also begun our certification journey to officially document our adherence to established industry practices. We are nearly finished with our first certification – ISO 27001 and, assuming all goes well, we’ll achieve that around the end of this year. Soon after that we’ll be working on demonstrating compliance with the European Model Clauses. After that we’ll continue our journey, working towards increasingly strict compliance regimens like FISMA and others.
I hope this document is helpful in understanding how we go about protecting your data.
Brian