Security News > 2001 > May > ASP security and dispute resolution guidelines released

http://www.computerworld.com/cwi/story/0,1199,NAV47_STO60694,00.html By TODD R. WEISS May 18, 2001 New global procedures for improved security and efficient dispute resolution for application service providers (ASPs) were announced today to help solidify the future of the emerging industry. After a year's work, the Wakefield, Mass.-based ASP Industry Consortium (ASPIC) and the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) today released final recommendations and guidelines that will be used by WIPO's Arbitration and Mediation Center to resolve disputes between ASPs and their customers on a worldwide basis. WIPO is a Geneva-based United Nations agency specializing in intellectual property matters. In addition to its work with the ASP consortium, WIPO is one of the four organizations that resolves domain-name disputes under deals with the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers. Jim O'Reilly, an ASPIC spokesman, said the new rules and procedures are needed because ASP vendors and their customers can be located in different countries, making fair dispute resolution procedures much more difficult because of differing laws and customs. A key to the guidelines will be the dispute avoidance recommendations that are built into them, he said. Those recommendations are aimed at helping to keep problems from escalating into full-blown disputes. Traver Gruen-Kennedy, chairman of ASPIC, said in a statement that "cyberspace has no borders, yet the world still operates under a system of cultural and historic borders, meaning a process is required to address business disputes that may occur in a cross-border relationship." Meredith Whalen, an analyst at market-research firm IDC in Framingham, Mass., said the guidelines target "some of the challenges that the [ASP] market has," including concerns from users about the security of their data when their applications are hosted by an outside company. "ASPs have been trying to instill confidence in their customers," Whalen said. The new guidelines could help make users "more confident about buying the service" and in turn lead to increased growth in the ASP industry, she added. The global dispute avoidance and resolution guidelines are available on the Web sites of both groups, which announced the project a year ago. An early version of the rules and guidelines was released in November. ISN is hosted by SecurityFocus.com --- To unsubscribe email isn-unsubscribe () SecurityFocus com

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