Digital Realty Trust, Inc. has launched an initiative to adopt the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants' (AICPA) new SOC2 reporting standards. Digital Realty Trust has engaged KPMG LLP to lead the adoption and compliance effort, which is intended to ensure the security of the Company's physical and environmental control systems according to the new standards established by the AICPA.

SOC2 is a new form of Service Organization Control (SOC) reporting defined by the AICPA to enable service organizations to provide assurance to their customers in areas including security, following the retirement of the legacy SAS 70 reporting standard. SOC2 is a mechanism for service organizations to report on the design and effectiveness of their security policies, communications, procedures and monitoring based on detailed criteria, providing customers with enhanced security protocols to protect their mission critical computing systems, intellectual property and confidential data.

"This SOC2 initiative will continue to ensure that our datacenter operations are compliant with industry best practices and the evolving needs of our customers," said Rebecca Brese, Vice President of Customer Service for Digital Realty Trust. "Security is an issue of the utmost importance to our customers. Our adoption of the AICPA's SOC2 criteria will provide an additional level of confidence for our customers that Digital Realty Trust is meeting or exceeding their business and technical standards."

"In the short time since the release of SOC2 in May, we have seen considerable momentum with planned adoption by cloud service providers and strong support from users of cloud, datacenter and other outsourced IT services," said Mark Lundin, KPMG's SOC2 and Cloud Assurance Lead Partner. "We believe that SOC2 will be a primary vehicle for providing third party assurance on security in 2011 and beyond."