Financial services firms highlight security advantages of Asigra Cloud Backup to protect sensitive data

Asigra Inc., the cloud backup software provider, has announced that financial services firms globally are selecting Asigra Cloud Backup to enhance the security, compliance and simplicity of their data protection efforts. Delivered as a private, public or hybrid cloud solution, Asigra delivers the advantages of cloud computing while providing a framework for the compliant, secure and efficient recovery of data when and where it is required.

"Sensitive data in any company's backup set is sure to be just as critical as the information in their production environment. Therefore, the security of backup data should receive equally high levels of protection," said Erik Smith, IT Manager for Purdy Insurance Agency. "With encryption in-flight and at-rest from cradle to grave, we trust Asigra-based backup services by Data Storage Corporation to meet the strict standards of FIPS 140-2 certification by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) - making it the right choice for us."

The Federal Information Processing Standard (FIPS) is an internationally recognised standard for cryptography products, developed by the United States Federal government for use by all non-military government agencies and by government contractors. Certification of Asigra's Cloud Backup software platform encompasses the entire system for all data in-flight and at-rest. The security requirements cover eleven areas related to the secure design of Asigra Cloud Backup, from physical and logical integrity of the software to system level functionality such as user access control and key management. This certification provides one of the highest levels of assurance for security products, and requires extensive third-party lab certification.

Asigra Cloud Backup Security Features:

• ALL data encrypted in-flight and at-rest
• FIPS 140-2 certified
• Key escrow management
• Password rotation support
• Data destroyed with certificate of destruction

Financial organisations responsible for volumes of sensitive customer data require the ability to protect this information wherever it resides, whether in the data center, on desktops, or mobile devices such as laptops, tablets or smartphones. Governmental and corporate compliance in addition to public assurance that information is held in strict confidence are top among priorities in this much scrutinized and highly regulated industry. The main challenges from the perspective of backup and recovery include the ability to enforce strict data privacy requirements, respond to new reporting, comply with longer data retention times, meet compliance mandates from both government and IT-infrastructure and improve IT responsiveness in a competitive environment.

"While data security is a top concern, recovery of data in the event a system goes down is equally as important from an operational perspective," said Guy Sanfilippo, Director of Information Technology at American Federation of Musicians & Employers' Pension Fund. "With Asigra's Recovery Assurance delivered by our service provider, Data Storage Corporation, I can relax knowing that our data is not only locked behind military grade security but can be recovered at any time to any place. Even without experiencing a true disaster recovery event, I have had the need to restore mailboxes from our Exchange Server, databases from our database servers and data files from our file servers. In every case the restore ran quickly and smoothly. The ability to restore data from any backup on a retention schedule is a great comfort."

According to CEB TowerGroup, the leading research and advisory services firm focused exclusively on the global financial services industry, "The financial services industry will increase its investment in cloud computing to $21.9 billion (or five percent) by the end of 2012. Cloud computing is particularly attractive to organizations looking to speed service delivery and increase IT efficiencies while supporting information management, service management and service-oriented architecture (SOA) initiatives."

"As the need for cloud backup and recovery grows for the financial services industry, organizations have to ensure the solution they choose provides the necessary level of security and compliance," said Eran Farajun, EVP, Asigra Inc. "For organizations that have strict compliance requirements, such as Sarbanes-Oxley, Basel II or Basel III, our cloud backup solution, the first to be FIPS 140-2 approved, provides them with the security and peace of mind they require."