Security and Availability

Security:

All SmartDealerProducts software is web-based or web-enabled, and as such requires diligence on the part of IAS to ensure that customer and dealer data is not compromised. When a user accesses SmartDealerProducts software, that user is actually accessing a combination of servers housed in a state of the art co-location facility in Austin, Texas. These servers, all of which run Microsoft Windows Server software, are checked daily to ensure that all security updates are in place.

Data integrity is ensured with not just one, but three levels of security. The primary security level is industry standard SSL encryption. SSL guarantees that all data sent between the client and the server cannot be deciphered by unintended parties. The second level of data security is Microsoft WSE, which not only provides a secondary encryption algorithm, but also guarantees that data sent between the client and server cannot be intercepted and redirected through it's authentication and authorization capabilities. The third level of data security is in the Cisco PIX firewall solution, a hardware device which prevents unauthorized access to the servers at the co-location facility.

We feel that these three levels of security are among the strongest in place in any business today.

Availability (Backup and Redundancy):

As previously mentioned, the "server side" of the SmartDealerProducts software suite is a combination of server hardware. This multiple server approach is in place for redundancy and performance reasons. If any of the servers were to become unavailable, the downed servers' twin would automatically take over its duties.

In addition to this server redundancy, the server co-location facility has Internet redundancy in place. There are three Internet backbone connections which feed in to the server switch, ensuring high availability of Internet connectivity.

The server co-location facility also hosts IAS' SpectraLogic Gator tape library for daily backups. This massive tape backup system provides expandability up to 64 terabytes of tape storage online simultaneously. The system is configured for daily backups, and each daily backup is stored on two separate tapes. One of these two tapes is stored off-site in case of catastrophe at the co-location facility.