When you’re responsible for protecting sensitive data, you don’t have the luxury of taking risks. Regulations shift. Threats evolve. When security slips, things get real. Fast. And the pressure to move quickly, while maintaining airtight governance, never slows down.
For more than two decades at SAS, we’ve provided cloud solutions for organizations across public sector, financial services, and health and life sciences. Our goal has always been simple: align with best practices and evolve as your needs evolve. We maintain industry-leading security and privacy certifications, including SOC 2 Type II, SOC 3, ISO 27001, and participate in the EU U.S. Data Privacy Framework. These independent validations demonstrate our commitment to protecting customer data and operating with transparency and trust.
Security that moves with you, not ahead of you
In a world of geopolitical instability, achieving “cutting edge security” isn’t only a goal - reliable, modern, standards aligned security is the expectation. You need a partner that offers the strongest protections available and then delivers them in a way that fits your organization.
That’s where SAS Managed Cloud Services (MCS) comes in. Our teams operate as an extension of yours, adjusting controls, processes, and environments based on what you need to meet evolving regulatory expectations.
As Brian Wilson, SAS’ Chief Information Security Officer (CISO), put it, “the goal is to align with best practice - and best practice changes all the time.”
Over the past several years, we’ve strengthened our operations in direct response to what you told us matters most.
Three ways your feedback reshaped how we operate
1. Federated access & modern authentication
In regulated environments, multi-factor authentication is everything. And with Viya 4, you’re in the driver’s seat. You manage identity. You set authentication controls. You can apply multi-factor authentication and other policies your organization relies on.
This federated model supports strong separation of responsibilities. You focus on your users and data, while we handle everything else that supports trust.
2. Clear responsibilities and the freedom to test what matters most to you
Customers often told us they need to validate the controls that matter to their business. So, we clarified the division of responsibilities: we outline exactly what falls on your side, and we coordinate and execute everything that falls on ours.
With that foundation in place, you now have the flexibility to test anything within your scope, whenever you need to. This model lets you focus on the security risks unique to your operations and governance requirements, while we ensure the underlying manage service remains protected and compliant. It’s a transparent, collaborative approach aligned to support shared assurance.
3. Next generation environments
You asked us to support your expanding compliance footprints, not just today’s requirements, but also tomorrow’s.
We’ve invested heavily in implementing enhanced security environments that incorporate cloud-native security controls into the architecture and processes designed to support increased resiliency. These environments also help you test and adopt multi-factor authentication broadly, while maintaining confidence as your regulatory demands grow more complex.
This includes creating NIST-capable environments, which are available with SAS Managed Cloud Services on Microsoft Azure Government, giving you a highly secure, compliant foundation built for the requirements of your public sector workloads. These offerings provide the additional security controls and capabilities customers need to support compliance with standards such as NIST 80053 Moderate, CJIS, IRS1075, FedRAMP, GovRAMP, IRAP, and DoD ProB. With SAS running on a cloud platform you already trust, you can modernize faster while meeting the regulatory and security requirements your work demands.
Standards keep shifting. We adapt with you.
Security will never be static. Frameworks revise. Auditors request more. Your privacy and compliance teams raise the bar.
What won’t change is how we support you:
- 24/7 operations staffed by experienced engineers
- 99.5%+ uptime commitments to keep your mission moving
- Cloud architecture built for resilience, not just availability
Your top 3 questions:
We regularly hear thoughtful, complex questions from our customer Here are three that came up in our recent discussion with Brian Wilson, CISO at SAS and Eric Brown, Managed Cloud Services, Public Sector Offering Manager at SAS—and how we approach them:
1. “How do we get our security questions answered during the acquisition process?”
We understand that you’re navigating input from legal, compliance, audit, procurement, and business teams. They all review our documentation at different times and have differing priorities in what should be answered.
We encourage you to loop us in from the start. Your Cloud Business Development Manager (CBDM) will work with you to ensure all of your questions are answered to provide the assurance you need.
2. “How will adopting Viya on MCS change the culture inside my organization?”
Transitioning to Viya in a managed cloud model often removes burden from your internal teams. You get:
- Standardized controls allowing for easy implementation
- Built‑in security practices aligned to the regulations you need
- Continuous monitoring
- Clear separation of responsibilities
Your teams spend less time maintaining infrastructure and more time focusing on innovation, analytics, and mission outcomes.
3. “What security or compliance area is evolving the fastest right now?”
Right now, the biggest inflection point is open‑source and third‑party software integration. Many of the most modern breaches in the market originate from integrations.
Because of this, we are continuously evaluating third‑party dependencies, monitoring vulnerabilities, and adapting controls to keep your environment secure as your integration needs grow.
Moving forward together
Your regulatory requirements aren’t getting simpler. Your threat landscape isn’t slowing down. But you don’t have to navigate any of it alone. SAS Managed Cloud Services prioritizes strong standards, thoughtful processes and trusted partnership. And above all, supporting you in the environments where security and compliance matter most.
If you’re ready to dig deeper into how SAS can support your security and regulatory needs, check out sas.com/mcs or visit the SAS Trust Center at sas.com/trust.
Want to learn more about the value SAS Managed Cloud Services can bring to your organization? Register for our webinar: Unlocking Value with Managed Cloud Services
