Inside a vault

Physical: We often hear prospective customers' concern about their data not residing within their offices. However, in many cases their office server is not even behind a locked door. In most small offices the ability to "keep the servers lit" in a power outage is limited to less than 30 minutes, after which "business is down."

At the data center where the Secure Cases application is housed, access to the first chamber in the building requires swiping a badge and entering a security code. Once inside the first chamber, the badge must be swiped to enter into a second chamber in which there are no windows and only three doors (the door entered and the two doors into the data center itself). Access to the equipment requires the badge and a fingerprint, and once inside where the equipment is located, each piece of equipment is housed in a cage that requires a combination code for access.

The data center building is constructed will a steel reinforced inner wall. Even if you drive a truck through the outer wall it is unlikely you will break through the inner wall. The roof of the building is constructed to withstand a Category 4 hurricane.

Power: The equipment in the datacenter gets its power from battery backups. Power from the local electric utility is used to keep the batteries constantly charged. Once a month the battery backups are tested by purposely turning of the electric utility power. The power to the building is on the same grid as a local hospital, so it is seldom that power is lost, and it is restored quickly when it is.

However, the data center also has five industrial generators that automatically start during a power loss and have the capability to power the data center for two days. In extended circumstances, like when that hurricane is coming, the data center has a contract with a local fuel supplier who will dispatch fuel tanker trucks on location with enough capacity to sustain operation for the anticipated duration circumstances require.

Communications: At the heart of every internet service provider's network there is a topology known as a SONET Ring. SONET rings, known as "self-healing rings," use two or more transmission paths between network nodes. To put this in English, imagine that rather than having a single telephone line or cable running from the street to your house, that instead, the cable encircled your house and each phone in your house had a line that went to a different location in the circle around your house.

You could cut one of the telephone lines to the circle around your house, and you would still be able to communicate because of the connections by the remaining telephones. The data center that houses the Secure Cases application is strategically located on top of SONET rings for three (that's right, 3 circles around us) different communications.

Here's a visual explanation that might this easier to understand: SecureCases Network Diagram

Still confusing? Still concerned? It might be more reassuring to get an assessment from your IT chief or somebody else who really understands this stuff. Here's a PDF about our security. You can download it and make a copy for them to review.