Should You Be Concern About SaaS Security?

At Pointivity we offer many IT services to our clients and one in particular is gaining popularity - our SaaS (Software-as-a-Service) solution. The IT industry is currently moving quickly to adopt SaaS to help customers control costs and take advantage of a shift towards the increasing availability of data and applications away from a traditional office setting. As the SaaS trend continues, there is also the growing concern over the security of SaaS delivery model versus on-premise solutions.

According to a recently article published on MessagingWire by Michael Osterman of Osterman Research, there are some misconception that the SaaS delivery model is less secure.

He points out the specific fears that decision makers have with regard to hosted/SaaS solution and went on to provide two key takeaways from his research findings:

• Education should be priority to help decision makers understand how their on-premise infrastructure and data transmission stacks up against SaaS solutions.
  
  
• Realize internal security procedures may be giving them a false sense of security. In many organizations, any employee can gain access to a server room or a backup tape quite easily, leaving the organization vulnerable to serious data loss.

For Pointivity we’re able to offer better security because we have access to more resources than most organizations do with their on-premise implementations. All our hosted/SaaS solutions are housed at a state-of-the-art SAS 70 (Statement on Auditing Standards No.70) Type II compliance data center, reflecting a consistent, reliable and secure operating environment to support customers worldwide. In addition, our 24x7 help desk is staffed by certified engineers that can provide both remote and onsite technical support for desktops, servers, network, routers, firewalls and other IT infrastructure.

Unlike traditional hosting providers, we bring process-specific and industry focused experience that help our clients integrate and manage their applications. Hosted in the cloud or onsite, we can assess and quantify the costs of your current technology platform then provide a complete ROI analysis using our infrastructure.

Osterman goes on to suggest that "on average, SaaS providers offer better security than most of their prospective customers because they have a) the resources to do so and b) they have much more to lose if they don’t."

We couldn’t agree more, supporting our client’s infrastructure is what we do, it’s our business and our core focus.

Do you have questions about SaaS? Are you interested to learn more about how Pointivity can transition your business into the hosted model? Contact us.

Business Continuity and Compliance Solution from Pointivity

With business becoming more complex and interconnected, the risk and cost of disruption extends well beyond IT, to every aspect of business processes. Business continuity is vital to business success.

In addition there are many regulations that cover Business Continuity and the overall category of Electronic Media. Some of these are industry specific such as Federal Rules of Civil Procedure (FRCP), SOX, SEC, FINRA and HIPAA.

Pointivity manages all client infrastructures through a state-of-the-art SAS 70 (Statement on Auditing Standards No.70) Type II compliance data center, reflecting a consistent, reliable and secure operating environment to support customers worldwide. Keep in mind that all hardware are owned, maintained, and managed completely by Pointivity.

That's the foundation of our Hosted Services and IT Outsourced Solution. We then add our Backup & Disaster Recovery Solution (BDR) and Messaging Archiving Solutions to deliver a comprehensive business continuity and compliance solution.

This cost effective solution can be tailored to individual business needs on a pay-as-you-go per user per month model while support is available via our Managed Services to provide a complete continuity program.

About the SAS 70 Type II:
SAS 70 is an internationally recognized auditing standard developed by the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA). SAS 70 is an acronym for ‘Statement of Auditing Standards.'

SAS 70 demonstrates that service providers have adequate controls and safeguards when they host or process data related to their customer base.

The audit includes on-boarding policies for new hires, disaster recovery and business continuity planning, IT and physical security policies, data backup and recovery procedures, provisioning of services, asset tracking and inventory management, separation of client infrastructures, decommissioning of servers and services, and other business practices.