The contract between the provider and customer enhances the customer's trust by holding the provider financially liable for negligence or inadequate service (although the customer remains legally liable for all inadvertent disclosures). Statutes, however, largely leave customers liable. The security control matrix is a tool for ensuring compliance with regulations. HIPAA is a statute.

The Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) pertains to organizations that handle credit card transactions and is an industry-regulatory standard, not a governmental one. The Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX) was passed in 2002 and pertains to financial records and reporting, as well as transparency requirements for shareholders and other stakeholders. The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) was passed in 1996 and pertains to data privacy and security for medical records. FISMA refers to the Federal Information Security Management Act of 2002 and pertains to the protection of all US federal government IT systems, with the exception of national security systems.

With many SaaS implementations, data is not isolated to a particular customer but rather is part of the overall application. When it comes to data destruction, a particular challenge is ensuring that all of a customer's data is completely destroyed while not impacting the data of other customers.