IT and Security

DirectLine Security

Megamation Systems Inc. is committed to secure access to customer data on our servers, and the preservation of that data by way of backup procedures. Megamation Systems uses Citrix XP for communications over the internet. Data is transferred through port 1494. All connections through 1494 must originate from the “Client” not the server.

We also offer SSL connection by way of Port 443 which uses secure certificates. All data is password protected on Megamation Systems’ servers and all servers are behind a Cisco Systems firewall router. This router is complete with a full feature set to protect against the possibility of “denial of service attacks”.

There are full backups done daily, and the tapes are kept off site. We use fibre optic cable access, and have a backup line available to prevent downtime. The availability of backup servers enables Megamation Systems to respond to the event of a server failure within minutes. The servers are monitored constantly.

If you require we will also zip the database and send it to our FTP, this would allow you to pull a copy of your data to your site as you desire. Our servers only accept calls from Port 1494 and 443 we do not allow incoming data over any other port, and we do not allow email to be received directly. We do not allow system services other than the ones required by our service. Through the secure ports we have direct access to our server farm, consisting of a number of WINTEL servers that are isolated from each other and also by Domain, user groups and users. We can therefore secure access to your data from at least 4 levels on the server and our software also has user-configured access to the Database. This means that you can limit the data accessed by the user groups inside your company.

We have 2 separate server farms with the configuration and capacity to run all of our clients, without performance degradation. Each of the server rooms is a secured and separate room with physical access limited to numbered keys that cannot be duplicated.

Backup of every system is done daily and taken off site and weekly backups are kept for 6 weeks. To reduce the chance of a service interruption caused by a disk drive failure all servers use raid 5 drives.

Disaster Recovery

Megamation Systems is committed to making your data as secure and safe as possible. We make use of current, proven technology to securely back up your information.

Megamation Systems performs a nightly backup of all client data. We are currently using BrightStor ARCseve Backup version 11.5r3. The backup has the ability to backup open files thus we do not require that users logoff during the backup window. We use LTO-3 tape media which has a 800GB capacity on a single cartridge when the data is compressed.

We also employ Disk Staging. which allows us to back up data to a temporary data storage location (staging area), and then migrate (copy) the data to tapes. We use a Network Attached Storage (NAS) device as our staging area. This has the advantage of:

Having a backup available on-site even after the tapes have gone off-site. This allows us to restore data from the previous day without the delay of retrieving tapes from off-site.
If there are any errors during the copy-to-disk destination process, the Disk Staging Option also allows you to create makeup jobs.
Allows us to perform backup verification (see below).
Allows us to shorten our backup window.

We use “Compare Backup Media to Disk” Backup Verification. This automatic verification reads blocks of data from the backup media and compares the data, byte for byte, against the source files on the staging area. The staging area has static data which allows us to do this verification even if users are logged into the production system. Additionally, we manual restore a server from tapes each day of the week excluding Saturday and Sunday. This ensures that the backups are being performed correctly and secondly that our support staff are fully training on the backup/restore procedure.  We perform full nightly backup. Our backup rotation consists of:

Daily backups of the last seven days.
weekly backups of the last ten weeks.

Our tapes are stored in an off-site secured storage facility. We use Iron Mountain for our off-site storage. They pick up the tapes daily and provide tape return within four hours. We can restore the previous days backup immediately from the staging area without requesting a tape from off-site storage. Spare servers are available at all times in case your production server fails. Our backup site can be used in case of a catastrophic even at our production site. The backup site is presently in Oakville, Ontario, Canada.