| 1.4.01 Where Is The Data: | | 1. People who have not yet understood and accepted the "cloud" can be identified by the question "where is the data". | | The data is in the cloud just like 90% of your personal data, your telephone calls, your emails, your Internet data, your search results, your utility data and your banking data. Every ISP is obliged by law to keep a copy of everything you do on the Internet - do you know where and how that data is used? Every email you send is copied and stored in the Internet - do you know where your emails are stored? Every mobile phone call you make is copied and stored in the Internet - do you know where your telephone calls are stored? | | 2. More than 60% of all retail business is now conducted on the Internet and most Government business must now to done over the Internet - all that Internet traffic is copied and stored in the cloud. In the same way as 100 years ago factories phased out their steam engines and water wheels when electricity services could power the entire town, today offices are phasing out their in-house servers and adopting cloud based services. Do people ask where their local power station is located and have they got a backup power station? Computer data services are just like electric services, leased on a per-usage basis. | | 3. Once your data is encrypted, then it cannot be said to be your data - it is just a meaningfull string of numbers that can be stored in many places. Only when your data is decrypted can it be said to be your data again - 99% of the time your data cannot be identified and could be said to not exist while it is encrypted. |
| Sovereignty: | | 1. Data sovereignty is very important to people who have not encrypted and secured their data - they need to know where it is and what governments are able to read it. Once data is professionally encrypted so it looks like a lot of numbers, then sovereignty has no meaning because no government can access the data not matter where it is physically located. If all customer records are deeply encrypted and that data copied to the USA, then not even the best NSA spies will know what data has been stored - its just worthless numbers. | | 2. Data sovereignty is not about where the data is physically stored, its about who and where are the encryption keys and methods. ASP grants access to Eliza to be able to decrypt certain data so it can be viewed and processed by approved people in approved places. Those approved people have no interest in how many places the data is physically located, so long as they can do their job. | | 3. Many countries have enacted laws that state that data about its subjects cannot be stored outside that country. However, once a subjects data is deeply encrypted so it is totally meaningless, then if the encrypted data is stored in many countries, then that is not personally identifiable information (PII) about a subject. | | 4. ASP is evolving from tens of data centers to thousands of data centers so encrypted data will be stored in the networks between those data centers. Data is unique for each data center pair and that leads to extreme levels of encryption as data flows rather than is stored in any one place. |
| Data Placement: | | 95% of all data is in an encrypted database - totally safe and replicated to many other secure locations. | | User documents and images that are uploaded are stored in network attached storage (NAS) servers with a hardened propriatory operating system. By any definition, the management of user uploaded data carries all kind of security risks, but none of these risks can impact on the independent web service and its encrypted database. |
| Data Storage: | | Data is stored in UK tier IV data centers that form the UK Internet backbone - places like London Internet Exchange (LINX). Space for server racks is rented in secure data centers in various parts of the UK - places selected for very high speed broadband connections and guaranteed power supplies. Dedicated servers are installed in a lights-out temperature controlled hall with fire suppression and very high levels of physical security. | | Servers are run from uninteruptable power supplies (UPS) where battery life exceeds the time to switch power suppliers or get the standby generators running. Servers have no USP ports, have no media drives, have no mouse or keyboard and have no screen. Servers are not part of a local area network (LAN) with client computers that may be infected or vulnerable to trojans and worms. | | Each encrypted database server is message switched to other replicated database servers so data is continually flowing between remote locations through encrypted tunnels. Where data is replicated to 4 or 5 remote data centers, it is virtually impossible for it to be lost, corrupted or fraudulently changed. |
| Three Tier Architecture: | | We choose to operate the safest and most reliable server architecture that humanity has been able to devise - that known as Three Tier Architecture where the three tiers are: | | 1. Web Servers (typically three) that are connected to a load-balancing firewall on the Internet side and a private router on the application side. | | 2. Application Servers (typically two) that are connected to a private router on the web server side and a private router on the database side. Application servers are not connected to the Internet and can only communicated via a web server. | | 3. Database Server that is connected to the private application router. The DB server is not connected to the Internet and it two independent networks away from the Internet. |
| Other Servers: | | Email is run from an independent Email server that is not part of the Three Tier Architecture. This ensures that if an email has a virus or Trojan, it cannot access any web service data. | | FTP is run from an independent encrypted FTP server that is is IP address locked for extra security. A NAS machine is also used for archive purposes and to hold uploaded documents in a separate and robust environment. | | Intrusion Detection and Prevention Server is run as an independent server that monitors all network traffic and blacklists any ihacker. |
| | | Import-Export Service: | | The owner of any data is provided with an import-export service where at any time and for any reason, a copy of some or all their data may be exported. | | Typically on a monthly basis, a copy of all data created or changed in the last month is exported as a CSV file. This provides the owner with their own private copy of the data that should be encrypted and stored in a safe place. Data that can be exported can also be imported in the same way. | | Data that is exported to a local computer is at risk where that data may be the target of theft and criminal attacks. The act of copying data from the cloud to a local computer creates a significant security threat that can be the target of criminal activity. Where an Executive takes a copy of the data and stores it on their laptop and then that laptop is stolen, the Executive is criminally responsible for exporting the data from the cloud. |
| File Transfer Service: | | The owner of any data may be provided with a file transfer service where each day a copy of all transactions can be tranfered to a safe computer location. | | Each day at five minutes past midnight, a copy of the days transactions are accumulated as a set of XML files on an encryted FTP server. An authorized FTP client with fixed IP address may login to the encrypted FTP server and download a copy of the days transactions. The daily FTP files are generally available from 00:05 until 23:00 GMT when they are physically moved to an archive server. |
| Natural Evolution: | | The natural evolution from in-house servers to computiing in the cloud will pass the tipping point in 2014 when 50% of all companies will have enbraced some kind of cloud computing. | | Retaining in-house servers is the equivalent of each office installing their own power generator and water treatment center - yes it possible, but it is false economy. 100 years ago my Grandfather was reluctant to give up the steam engine that powered his factory, but electricity was so much cheaper and electic motors were so much more effective than the steam engine that to stay with the steam engine would have been a certain business disaster. Today people that love their in-house servers imagine them to be safe from all disasters and secure from ram raiders and riots, but in reality, the least secure place to store valuable data is in a in-hose server room with hundreds of locally attached computers providing a vulnerability surface that can be cracked. | | The world has changed and tier IV data centers provide the most secure environment in the UK to store commercially valuable data. |
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