What is SAS70 Type II?

What is SAS 70?

The American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA) developed a set of guidelines for evaluating service organizations. These guidelines are called the “Statement of Auditing Standards Number 70 (SAS 70)”. An independent service auditor provides a detailed assessment of the service organizations’ control objectives and activities. The auditor also prepares an audit report which is called a “SAS 70” report. A SAS 70 report demonstrates that the service organization has implemented effective control objects and activities that are both beneficial to itself and its clients. The SAS 70 report can also aid the service organizations’ clients in completing their own financial audits. In the hosting and co-location industries, the SAS 70 report is important for companies who rely on outsourced hosting and co-location services. The SAS 70 report allows hosting and co-location companies to complete one report for all of their clients to use. EarthLink’s description of controls has also been prepared to enable EarthLink customers to gain an understanding of EarthLink’s control activities for purposes of assisting management in their assessment of internal controls over financial reporting in accordance with Section 404 of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act and the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board’s (PCAOB) Auditing Standard No. 5 (AS 5). Why is SAS 70 Type II important to our clients? 

There are two levels of a SAS 70 audit.  Type I just states that policies and procedures do exist, although there is no audit to ensure that the organization adheres to these procedures.  When selecting a Data Center, it is important to make sure that their SAS 70 certification is Type II which ensures that they adhere to their procedures.   

Achieving a SAS 70 Type II certification benefits EarthLink as well as their co-location and managed services clients. Many of our clients are institutional organizations and publicly traded companies who must comply with security requirements such as “Sarbanex-Oxley”. Those clients can use the audit report for their specific security requirements. If you are interested in obtaining your own SAS 70 Type II certification, call us to discuss the benefits of hosting your servers in our Data Center and the assistance we can offer your organization in becoming SAS 70 certified.