How to Ensure Your Chicago Data Center is Compliant with Industry Standards

Over recent years, the importance of ensuring data privacy, security, and accessibility has become ever more apparent. With that in mind, here is a straightforward guide on how to ensure your Chicago data center is compliant with industry standards.

What is data center compliance?

Data center compliance is the process of ensuring that data centers comply with all relevant compliance programs and local laws. The regulations and laws that apply to an organization tend to depend on three main factors. These are the business sector, business location, and customer location.

Business sector

Industry-specific compliance programs are usually managed by industry regulators. They generally apply to all businesses in that sector, regardless of where the business is located (or where its customers are located). Complying with these programs has been made a contractual requirement. This means that enforcement is governed by contract law.

Business location

All businesses have a registered legal address. Their employees and data will also have some form of physical presence. This may be in a property they own (or rent/lease) themselves or via third parties such as (public) cloud service providers (CSPs). Any governing body in any of these locations can mandate compliance measures. These can be backed by civil or criminal law.

Customer location

Similarly, all customers (or other, similar data subjects) have a physical address. The governing body in this location may regulate how its residents’ data can be used. This regulation may even override any permission granted by the customer. These regulations can be backed by civil or criminal law.

Key compliance regulations for Chicago data centers

Here is a guide to 7 of the key compliance regulations for Chicago data centers.

HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act): Mandates data centers hosting electronic protected health information (ePHI) for healthcare organizations to implement strict physical, administrative, and technical safeguards to ensure patient data privacy and security.

PCI DSS (Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard): Mandatory for data centers that store, process, or transmit credit card data. It requires strict security controls such as encryption, access management, regular monitoring, and vulnerability assessments to protect cardholder data and prevent breaches in the payment ecosystem.

GLBA (Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act): Applies to data centers servicing financial institutions. It requires the protection of non-public personal information (NPI) through administrative, technical, and physical safeguards to ensure data confidentiality and integrity.

FTC Safeguards Rule (amended under the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act): Enforced for non-banking financial institutions, it mandates a comprehensive security program to protect customer data.

SOX (Sarbanes-Oxley Act): Enforced for publicly traded companies, SOX mandates secure data storage and audit trails of financial records. Data centers hosting systems related to financial reporting must ensure proper access controls, data retention, and integrity.

FISMA (Federal Information Security Management Act): Relevant for data centers supporting federal agencies or handling federal data. It requires the implementation of information security programs in accordance with NIST standards.

Illinois Personal Information Protection Act (PIPA): This state-level law requires any data center storing personal information of Illinois residents to implement reasonable security measures. In case of a data breach, prompt notification to affected individuals and the Attorney General is required.

How to ensure your data center is compliant

Following these 10 steps will help ensure that your data center is always compliant.

Identify applicable regulations: Determine which laws apply based on the types of data stored (e.g., HIPAA for health data, PCI DSS for cardholder data). This ensures focus on relevant compliance efforts.

Bring together stakeholders: Work out who needs to be involved in ensuring compliance and ensure they have the necessary resources to do so. Compliance needs to be a recognized part of people’s jobs, not just something they fit in when or if they can.

Conduct a risk assessment: Evaluate security risks to physical infrastructure, networks, and data. A risk assessment helps identify vulnerabilities and guides the development of mitigation strategies aligned with legal requirements.

Develop policies and procedures: Document security and operational procedures that align with compliance mandates. These should cover data handling, incident response, user access, and data retention policies.

Implement physical and logical controls: Deploy access controls (e.g., biometric authentication, surveillance), environmental protections (e.g., fire suppression, backup power), and logical controls (e.g., firewalls, encryption, anti-malware) to safeguard systems and data.

Train personnel: Educate staff on compliance requirements, data handling procedures, and security best practices. Regular training reduces human error and reinforces a culture of compliance.

Monitor and audit continuously: Use automated tools and regular internal or third-party audits to ensure systems remain compliant. Logging and monitoring support the detection of unauthorized access and help demonstrate compliance.

Maintain incident response plans: Prepare for breaches with documented response and recovery plans. Regulatory compliance often mandates prompt breach notification and mitigation procedures.

Create and maintain documentation: Create and maintain thorough records of controls, policies, assessments, and audits to prove compliance during inspections or investigations.

Commit to external assessment: Bringing in fresh eyes periodically will give you a fresh perspective on your compliance.