Security & Backups

Two things for any web based product that are critical is Security and Backups.

Security

Security for a product like FoodBank Manager has many levels to be concerned about.

1. The End user. This is you - we have to make sure that when you access FoodBank Manager you are operating in a completely secure environment. For this we have all of FoodBank Manager behind a Security Certificate that provides 256 bit encryption for all of your data that you receive from us and send to us. In case you are wondering what 256 bit encryption is, it is a key that opens up a door that has 256 tumbler spots on it. Here is a sample key, as you can see it is a bunch of 0's and 1's - 256 in all.
   
   

   01001010 01101001 10011110 00011100 01010101 00111010 01101001 10011110 10011100 01010101 11101010 01101001 10011110 00111100 01010101 00001010 01101111 10011110 01111100 01010101 01001010 01101001 10011110 00111100 01110111 00001010 01101101 10011110 11011100 01010101 11111100 01010111

2. The Back End. This is us - we make sure that all of our servers communicate securely as well. As all of them have the same if not harder keys for internal communication between the servers, database and storage servers. We also make it tougher by upping our keys with rotating keys which renew to a new key every 5 minutes.


3. Physical Security. This is Amazon - we don't want someone to break into our office during the night and walk off with our servers and your data. So we utilize the Amazon AWS services which is servers in the Amazon data centers which have the strictest physical security and meet all of the requirements for even the highest security levels.

This Triad of security makes for the best possible security for you and your data. We do all we can to make sure you can feel good that your clients data is locked away tight and kept away from those that just want to do harm. Here is more on our security

Backups

Raise your hand if the desktop that runs your current Pantry tracking tool was backed up last night. The day before? How about once this month?

I am not trying to be silly but backups are the most overlooked security measure which causes so much pain and anguish. Usually you forgot, or have had good intentions to back up your data for a couple of months and the worst possible thing happens to your desktop. You get a virus or the drive fails.

What most do not understand is that it isn't if your computer crashes it is more when will the computer crash. Because it will, they all do at some point. Also most people save their backups on the same computer so when they have a crash they loose the backups too and sometimes the entire program.

This is what we do for FoodBank Manager and your data to keep it safe from catastrophic events.

1. We keep a library of 90 straight days of your data. Granted it isnt a good idea to recover from an old backup but if required at least it is there.


2. The backups we take of your data are stored in a completely different datacenter in a completely different state. This protects against catastrophic events such as fires destroying the physical equipment in a data center. it isn't likely that both datacenter locations would suffer a catastrophic event at the same time.

Our backups are rarely used but when they are you likely will only go back to last night which is a huge blessing to you and your volunteers. Also since FoodBank Manager is a web program, if your computer crashes all you need to do is go onto a different computer and you are back up and running again.