Financial Services Adopt Asigra

Asigra, Inc. announced that
financial services firms 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 recognized 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 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 organizations 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 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 research and advisory services firm
focused 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. "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."