Oct 15
2009
10 Things Every Local Government Should Know about SaaS – Part 9: Privacy Policy
SaaS and Privacy Policy
What’s the difference between privacy and security? Security is all about who can access your data. Privacy is about what people can do with the data they do have access to. How do SaaS providers ensure privacy?
Because personal data is handled and stored by your SaaS application provider, you would want to know that they hold your data in as high or higher regard than you do. What governs and restricts how, when, what can be done with your own contact data and your municipalities’ constituent data (it is your data) is referred to as the privacy policy.
As a SaaS provider with a Salesforce.com partnership, local government software subscribers, not only have their privacy policy aligned with those of TRUSTe, the internet privacy giant boasting the strongest and most trusted privacy policy model in the business, but with Salesforce.com it is actually certified by TRUSTe. This ensures that subscribers enjoy privacy protections in accordance with TRUSTe’s strict privacy principles, and that all customer information is respectively treated as though it were sensitive and not made available to 3rd parties for their own use. Data is managed responsibly, while ownership of the data remains firmly assigned to the municipality.
Click here to read last week’s post about SaaS and security.
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We are finding increased adoption of our SaaS IT Governance Solution in State and Local entities. A few years ago, privacy and security concerns deterred State/Local entities from adopting SaaS solutions. With the increased acceptance of SaaS and the rigor of privacy and security measures, along with the benefits of ease-of-use and reasonable price, State and Local entities are rapidly adopting SaaS solutions. This is good for constituents (lower cost), good for the environment (SaaS is a green solution, compared to installed software), and good for the users (ease of use).
Keith Carlson, CEO, Innotas
Thanks Keith for your comments. It is interesting how with the growth of SaaS that we’ve also had to overcome perceptions made by the predecessor to SaaS: ASP. The largest difference being: data ownership. ASP left a bad taste in everyone’s mouth due to this issue, and that is why we wanted to mention that a privacy policy must in place. It really is your data; just like your money in a bank account is also your money. However, wouldn’t it be nice to have a say over what the bank can not do with your money?