February 15, 2022 Addition of Information Disclosure Guidelines for Safety and Reliability of Cloud Services Using AI (ASP/SaaS Edition) to Information Disclosure Guidelines for Safety and Reliability of Cloud Services

A set of information disclosure guidelines for the safety and reliability of cloud services established and announced by the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications (MIC) specifies improvements in the safety and reliability of cloud services. The guidelines consist of seven information disclosure guidelines that indicate items of information contributing to the comparison, evaluation, and selection of cloud services by users.
In light of an increase in the provision of AI-based cloud services, MIC added information disclosure guidelines for the safety and reliability of cloud services using AI (ASP/SaaS edition). This addition serves as a new policy to deal with risks when cloud service providers provide AI-based cloud services.

1. Background

Cloud services, such as IaaS, PaaS, and ASP/SaaS^*1 are spreading. In line with this, it is necessary to respond to users’ information needs contributing to comparing, evaluating, and selecting cloud services. For this reason, based on the deliberations of the ASP-SaaS-Cloud Promotion Council^*2, MIC will promote the disclosure of information on cloud services. In addition, the following information disclosure guidelines, collectively called information disclosure guidelines for the safety and reliability of cloud services, have been established and published to facilitate users’ comparison, evaluation, and selection of cloud services.
In light of an increase in the provision of AI-based cloud services, MIC established new guidelines for disclosing information related to the safety and reliability of AI-based cloud services. These additional guidelines serve as a policy for dealing with risks when ASP/SaaS and other cloud service providers provide AI-based cloud services.

Information Disclosure Guidelines for Safety and Reliability of Cloud Services (Revised in October 2008)

• 1.
  Information Disclosure Guidelines for Safety and Reliability of ASP/SaaS (Second Edition)
• 2.
  Information Disclosure Guidelines for Safety and Reliability of ASP/SaaS (Services for Handling Specific Personal Information Edition)
• 3.
  Information Disclosure Guidelines for Safety and Reliability of ASP/SaaS (Medical Information Handling Services Edition)
• 4.
  Information Disclosure Guidelines for Safety and Reliability of IaaS and PaaS (Second Edition)
• 5.
  Information Disclosure Guidelines for Safety and Reliability of Data Centers (Third Edition)
• 6.
  Information Disclosure Guidelines for Safety and Reliability of IoT Cloud Services^*3 (ASP/SaaS Edition)
• 7.
  Information Disclosure Guidelines for Safety and Reliability of IoT Cloud Services (IaaS/PaaS)

• *1
  IaaS (short for Infrastructure as a Service) refers to a service that provides necessary hardware infrastructure functions for ASP, SaaS, and PaaS, such as servers, hard disks, and storage, as well as complex data center functions, via a network. In a narrow sense, PaaS (short for Platform as a Service) refers to a service that provides system infrastructure functions, network infrastructure functions, and development and execution infrastructure functions via a network. In a broader sense, it refers to services that include data centers and IaaS. IaaS and PaaS are sometimes collectively referred to as hosting services.
  ASP (short for Application Service Provider) and SaaS (short for Software as a Service) refer to services that provide system functions required by specific or unspecific users through a network.
• *2
  In April 2020, the ASP-SaaS-IoT Cloud Consortium changed its name to the ASP-SaaS-Cloud Promotion Council.
• *3
  IoT cloud services refer to cloud services that use IoT devices (sensors and actuators).

2. Published material

• *
  The published material is in Japanese only.