SAS 70 auditing was put into force by the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants in 1992 and is something that has become especially popular in recent years. This has a lot to do with the incredible growth of legislation regarding compliance. An example of a piece of regulation that is focused on compliance is the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002. You will also find that there are other pieces of legislation such as HIPAA that have been put into place to protect individuals from being violated in some way, particularly in the area of privacy. SAS 70 does the same thing. It keeps individuals from being violated in some way. One way in particular is some sort of private information being released that could be used by others for malicious purposes.