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Safeguard your data, outsmart the criminals – Part 2

By Eudora Kelley
01 June 2016   |   2:45 am
Onsite backups through a network-attached storage feature copy your information on to a hard drive. In some instances tape drives are also used—the combination of which provides ready ...

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When you’re switching over to a cloud backup system, it’s also important to realize that sending the information up to the cloud can take weeks when there is a lot of information to replicate, so you’ll need another form of backup in the meantime.

Onsite backups through a network-attached storage feature copy your information on to a hard drive. In some instances tape drives are also used—the combination of which provides ready access to a backup at all times.

Take advantage of virtual servers
Within the last couple of years, virtualization has become much more affordable to the small-business owner. This technology involves essentially running two computers simultaneously, which ensures no downtime if you have a hardware failure on one of the systems, because you have an exact replica of your server.

Maintain firewalls
Intrusion prevention provided by firewalls blocks your data from the outside world, preventing intruders from accessing your information. According to Davis, when it comes to firewalls it’s best to have an appliance that protects your data, rather than software.

“Hardware firewalls sit between the Internet and your data, capturing intruders before they even enter your network,” he says. “When you use a software firewall, the harmful data is allowed to enter your system and uses up Internet space while the software attempts to block it and push it back out.”

Employ content filters
Content filtering protects you and your employees from entering websites that are potentially harmful to your computer system. Filtering also enables you to promote a more productive work environment by limiting what websites your employees are able to view.

Use anti-virus and spam filters
Anti-virus software continually scans your computer, ensuring that no viruses compromise your computer or e-mail. When a virus is detected, the software quarantines the harmful data and deletes it. The best e-mail virus software scans incoming and outbound mail, which ensures that you don’t inadvertently pass on any viruses to your e-mail recipients.

While everyone gets spam e-mail, programs exist that substantially reduce the amount of spam you receive, which protects the integrity of your computer and ensures that your system stays clean and runs fast.

Rely on UPS power support
Essentially a giant backup battery, a UPS (uninterrupted power supply) protects your computer from harmful power outages, spikes and drops. Such an appliance is particularly important in this day and age, as electricity has become “dirtier,” which means that it fluctuates in strength, says Davis, who notes that electrical variations can be particularly harmful to computers.
“A UPS is essentially a giant surge protector with a battery behind it that cleans the power,” he says. “In the case of a sudden power outage, the UPS acts as a buffer. If the power remains off, the device allows the computer to power down safely rather than turn off abruptly, which avoids corruption of the computer’s operating system and loss of critical company data.”

Data protection
Norada follows mission critical data backup and management process. All data is written to multiple disks instantly and backed up to our archiving system at least once each day. To address the possibility of a catastrophic event, backup archives are also copied to a second geographic location. Files that you upload are stored securely on Amazon’s S3 service. S3 uses decentralized storage techniques to improve upload/download response time. All files stored on S3 are also backed up to our internal systems regularly ensuring we are able to safeguard your data.

At any time you can quickly export a copy of all of your information you’ve saved. The export is provided in a standard format that can be imported into most spreadsheet or database applications. All data backups are encrypted and are not readable without access to the secured authorisation keys.

All web content that is shown inside your account, such as email messages and content received from online forms, is automatically cleaned of any malware code. This is similar to virus scanning for web content.

Authentication
The system encodes the Solve password using one-way encryption (64 byte hash function) which cannot be decoded.
Sequential failed login attempts are tar-pitted and reported to systems engineers.

The session key your browser uses to communicate with cannot be read by JavaScript. This prevents a hacker from reading the key stored temporarily in your browser memory and accessing your account from another location.

Two-factor authentication is available by logging in through Google Apps SSO and not setting a Solve specific password.

Data transmission
All data transmitted between your computer (or mobile device) and the application servers are encrypted using 256 bit Secure Socket Layer (SSL) technology. This prevents anyone from reading the information as it is transmitted over the networks. This the same method online banks use to keep your information secure.

Internal process
Norada adheres to a comprehensive privacy policy and a very limited number of Norada employees are able to access your information. These employees are specifically trained and experienced with regard to the practices and importance of maintaining your privacy and are only authorised to access your account information on an as needed basis to complete tasks related to the maintenance and operation of our service, or at your request.

Service isolation
The Solve service is physically separate from ancillary services such as website, forums, etc. to decrease the probability that any issue in these areas would affect our core service.

Network and computer room environment
Our primary production servers are owned by Norada and operated by authorised Norada staff. This equipment is located in our Global Internet Data Center (GIDC) in Atlanta, Georgia. This location is connected directly to the Internet backbone through nine global Internet providers and is SAS-70 type II certified. The GIDC provides the physical environment necessary to keep our service up and running 24×7. The facility is purpose designed with raised floors, rack mounted equipment, dual air control systems, fully redundant on premise power, and backup generators. A complete set of physical security features, including detection suppression systems, protect the equipment and connections.

Our equipment hosted at the facility is subject to around-the-clock systems management with personnel trained in the areas of networking, Internet, and systems management.
High reliability is provided through a number of redundant subsystems, such as multiple fiber trunks coming into the IDC from multiple sources.

Penetration tests are performed against our services periodically by a specialised computer security auditing firm.

Server configuration
Our environment is configured with numerous Web, Email, Database, Storage and Security servers. Our application servers use state of the art load-balancing software to enable multiple servers to act as a single, easily managed system. Through software agents on every server, our load-balance solution monitors the system’s health and availability and then directs requests to the server best able to maximise service levels. The modular architecture of the platform also allows for horizontal scaling of the system in the event of overall increases in platform requirements or specific spikes in concurrent user numbers or messaging volume.

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