INTERNATIONAL WEB HOSTS
US-based Web hosting companies doing business in European countries are discovering that they need to deal with plenty of inter-cultural bumps along the road. Regulations vary throughout Europe: There are many international codes for hosts that result in rigorous compliance standards on operations, security and privacy. In fact, violations can result in huge setbacks for hosting companies.
"The best thing about information security standards is that there are so many to choose from," jokes Mike Higgins, managing director of TekSecure Labs, the network security division of Tekmark Global Solutions LLC (tekmarkinc.com), an Edison, New Jersey-based IT consulting firm for Fortune 500 companies worldwide, including Web hosts. "With an incredibly complicated international [collection] of laws, regulations and standards, you end up with an environment in which you are going to be compliant half the time and out of compliance the rest of the time."
The standards can result in an assortment of fines and may even land the odd budding European Web hosting titan in jail. And liability standards for hosts can vary from nation to nation. In France, a privacy violation could actually result in a three-year prison term. Germany and the UK require the reporting of any significant network downtime, with possible suspension of operations for downtime lasting more than a day. Spain will charge as much as the American equivalent of $600,000 US per privacy violation on the collection and processing of personal data — the highest fine known to date.
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