(The Hosting News) – The Planet, the global hosting leader, today announced that it has successfully completed the U.S.-European Union (EU) Safe Harbor self-certification process. Developed by the U.S. Department of Commerce and modeled after the European Commission’s Directive on Data Protection, the Safe Harbor framework provides U.S. businesses guidelines for protecting personal data from Europe.
The Planet’s participation in Safe Harbor is voluntary, and provides assurances to customers that the company adheres to the same rigorous privacy guidelines established by the European Commission. In addition, The Planet’s customers can now benefit by avoiding interruptions during trans-Atlantic business dealings that are required to comply with European privacy legislation.
During the certification process, The Planet demonstrated compliance with the seven Safe Harbor principles. These include guidelines around maintaining transparent customer communications; ensuring security, privacy and integrity of customer data; and providing an open avenue for customers to contact the company with concerns.
The Safe Harbor certification joins the company’s previous completion of the Statement on Auditing Standards No. 70 (SAS 70) Type II audit, which ensures the company maintains rigorous controls and processes across operations, including its eight data centers, network and customer support.
“With the amount of data exchanged between businesses, there’s increasing concern about security of the information,” said Jim Picone, vice president of customer care. “For any business, a leak or loss of mission-critical data can be devastating. Our customers place their trust in us to safeguard their businesses, which is why we completed the Safe Harbor self-certification process. While protecting customer data has always been core to our business, we’re voluntarily participating in a program that holds us to the standards established by the European Commission’s Directive on Data Protection. This provides additional assurances to our customers and those who do business with partners around the world that their data is safe with The Planet.”
About The Planet
The Planet is the leading provider of On Demand IT Infrastructure solutions, hosting more than 18,000 small- and medium-size businesses and 12 million Web sites worldwide. Customers have the power to choose from the broadest range of hosting solutions in the industry, from dedicated servers, Essential Managed Services, Managed Hosting and data center colocation,, all backed by 24x7x365 support. With the best choice of servers, software tools and world-class service, backed by state-of-the-art data centers and an enterprise-class network, The Planet turns IT into a powerful competitive advantage that enables customers to grow their businesses. For additional information, visit http://www.theplanet.com.
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