Host Gator becomes Safe Harbor Certified

According to a recent HostGator May 2010 Newsletter, they are now Safe Harbor Certified.

Though this isn’t directly related to cloud computing.  It is interesting in that is shows hosting services in USA are becoming sensitive to the fact that overseas privacy regulation and concerns are more stringent than those imposed by USA.

In Australia, the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority (APRA) is apparently still not fully comfortable with the private information of customers of Prudential Wealth Management heading overseas.  You can read here about how the jury (APRA) is still out on whether or not they are comfortable with Prudential’s plans to use Salesforce.com which is hosted in the USA.

I am not aware of any agreement between Australia and USA or other country that is similar to the EU – USA Safe Harbour agreement.  The most likely place we need to establish such an agreement with is Singapore as that appears to be the target hosting site for the big clouds (Amazon, Azure) in Asia region.