Still, it's a tall order to measure dedicated resources accurately, especially since employees like Sprint's may serve dual purposes. And though managed-security services, such as firewalls, can benefit hosting customers, it's rare for these services to be tightly integrated with hosting services at large network providers. Corporate inertia is simply too great. It lets customers view administrative audit trails for their own machines and opens up its written security policies on a nondisclosure basis. Without this type of disclosure, it's very difficult to assess the security of a hosting provider.
Sprint takes a very different approach.
It doesn't allow customers to conduct their own audits or evaluations or view Sprint's security policies. Sprint obviously decided to take this approach because the security for its own network is closely tied into its hosting security model. That's one measure of comfort, but alone, it wouldn't suffice. Sprint goes the extra mile, seeking security recertification from a Big Six accounting firm twice a year. If a fix isn't immediately available, Digex says it will architect one.