More uptime availability and performance success for Safe4

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During January 2015 Safe4 maintained 100% availability of the service except for a short period  when our hosting partner applied a critical security patch to the infrastructure.  Since we take the security of our customers’ information very seriously it was felt that applying this patch was essential. The downtime was scheduled for overnight at a weekend, so it is hoped that it did not impact any of our users. Please accept our apologies if you were unable to access the service during this time.

Availability

We hope you are pleased with the performance you are seeing when using the system. In order to help target improvements Safe4 tracks the time taken to display pages in the system. Since there are a number of factors that can cause performance problems we have implemented an approach which measures the time it takes for you to be able to use a page. This is the most realistic measure we can find.

When developing Safe4 the team treat any page that takes longer than 2 seconds to load to be a defect. This is our performance target.

We are pleased to advise that during January the average (median) page load time experienced was 0.89 seconds. This is well under our target so it is hoped that we are meeting your performance expectations.

Performance

If we examine individual geographies we can see the impact of the internet on the performance.

  • Performance in the UK, where our data centre is based, is averaging out at 0.78 seconds.
  • Performance in South Africa is averaging out at 1.5 seconds, despite the extra network connections we are pleased to be getting great performance here.
  • The slowest average performance at 1.6 seconds seems to be for users in the United States where increased network delays seem to be adversely affecting performance.

Safe4 will continue to monitor performance and availability of the service to ensure that we meet the demands of your businesses. Look out for updates to these charts in the coming months.

Safe4 achieves Cyber Essentials accreditation

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Cyber Essentials Badge Medium (72dpi)

The Cyber Essentials accreditation scheme was implemented by the UK Government to establish criteria for the management of information in order to prevent intrusion from external attackers.  Accredited organisations are entitled to display the Cyber Essentials logo, which confirms that they have met the standards required.

Safe4 have received this accreditation, and we are now able to display the Cyber Essentials badge on our website and our secure cloud service.

This is part of an ongoing process to ensure that Safe4 remains one of the most secure sites on the internet.  It is accompanied by annual penetration testing, performed by licenced external laboratories, and constant surveillance of the ever-growing range of internet security threats.

The objective is to ensure that Safe4 customers’ data is protected to the highest standards available, and that our user community in the legal, financial, insurance, health and government sectors can trust their confidential information to Safe4.

For further information, please refer to the Contact page on our website.  We would appreciate an opportunity to speak with you.

Safe4 Information Management Limited

February 2015

New Feature: Index of files in a vault

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Recently a number of customers, particularly in the Legal sector, have been asking for assistance with producing an index of all of the files in a vault. Discussing the reasons behind these requests with our customers has shown that while the folder structure is a convenient way to manage the contents it can make it hard to get an overview of the complete vault.

This problem is exacerbated as our users have gained confidence in the usability and security of Safe4. The service is being used for increasingly complex projects and matters involving larger numbers of participants.

Safe4 customers are building increasingly large folder structures and using the advanced security and encryption capabilities in the system to store ever more files – some vaults now have over 100 folders and some contain in excess of 10,000 files.

While the Safe4 servers are more than capable of handling these large vaults – their very size can make it hard for the users to understand the complete vault and to focus their attention where necessary.

To assist with these situations Safe4 are pleased to announce a small new feature that enables Provider users to quickly produce an index of files in a vault.

Accessible from the Action menu on the Clients page, this function produces a simple index of all of the files in a vault in a format that can be saved as HTML or copied into Excel for further processing.

This new feature is available in Safe4 today.

The index function respects the security established in the vault – so a user producing an index can only see those files they are entitled to view.

We are very pleased to see our customers make increasing use of the secure distribution, collaboration and storage facilities in Safe4.

Features, such as the new vault index function, are especially important as they are the result of feedback from our users. We hope that this new capability in the system makes Safe4 simpler for users working with the large volumes of critical information produced in many projects.

Later updates to the system will make this functionality available to Client users, and will simplify the process of exporting the index to Excel.

UK Legal Profession warned of the importance of information security

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A number of sources have recently published some salutary information on the need for improved security among the UK’s professional practioner community.  Digital Law have highlighted this in a fairly damning article, which can be viewed by clicking here.  The UK Information Commissioner’s Office has pointed out the need for solicitors and barristers to take greater note of poor security standards, and to draw attention to these when possible.  At present more than 50% of UK law firms use open email services to transfer confidential information.

Whilst not everyone will regard US whistle-blower Edward Snowden as their favourite source of advice on security matters, his recent comments on data security, and in particular the use of Dropbox, make interesting reading.  A number of leading UK security specialists have strongly supported his views.  His comments can be viewed by clicking here.

By providing a highly secure document delivery and storage service, Safe4 overcomes all of these concerns.  Using UK-hosted data centres accredited to ISO-27001, Safe4 is among the most secure services on the internet according to independent testing laboratories.  Annual penetration testing under the auspices of GCHQ through the UK Government’s IT CHECK scheme also helps to ensure that confidential information is managed using the highest standards possible.

If you would like more information on how Safe4 can assist your firm, please use the Contact Us link on this website.

Safe4 teams up with Valeos

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Valeos logo 8 Apr 14

Valeos was created by David Ross in 2014 to bring a range of value-added services to organisations wishing to refresh or extend their offerings.  David has long experience in the insurance industry, and is currently working with a number of insurers who are seeking ways to expand their services.

David feels that introducing Safe4 is an ideal way to bring additional services and capabilities to this sector.  He believes that “the Safe4 secure document delivery and storage service is a perfect fit for many of the organisations I am now working with, and brings real additional value.”

Ben Martin, Safe4 director, agrees.  “Safe4 are delighted to partner with Valeos.  We recognise that the experience and knowledge gained by David through many years in the insurance and financial services sector provides an excellent opportunity for the delivery of a highly secure document delivery and storage service as an extension of the core Valeos proposition.  Safe4 and Valeos will work together to bring these combined benefits to clients in a sector for which total security of information transfer is of prime importance.”

Valeos are based in Leeds, one of the UK’s leading centres for financial and professional services.  Yorkshire-based media have also covered this development, click here for more information.

Safe4 Launches New Website

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Safe4 is very pleased to announce the launch of a newly designed website. In developing the new site we have tried to ensure it contains information for both prospective and current customers.

As well as a new design, which you will see roll out across all our material in the coming months – we have restructured the website to help you find the information you need more quickly.

The site is structured around the benefits and features of the Safe4 service that any business will obtain by making use of the solution. While these provide important information we have added a much clearer section on “Business Sectors” which provide specific examples of how the Safe4 service can deliver specific benefits in a range of industries and business sectors.

Covering Legal and Professional, Finance, Property, Health, Public Sector and Corporate uses these pages provide a lot of insight into how Safe4 can supplement your existing processes and deliver significant returns.

We have also taken the opportunity to make it easier to find Case Studies, and detailed White Papers applicable to different industries which provide much more detailed information on how a business can maximise the value of using Safe4.

Finally News and Articles have been provided which list product development news, customer announcements, security advice and other business ideas.

We hope you like the new design and the structure of the information in the site. Please do let us have your feedback and suggestions for more information you would like to see in the system.

Upgraded Infrastructure for Safe4

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The infrastructure that runs Safe4 was designed when the service launched in 2010. Implemented at the beginning of the cloud computing revolution, the system has proven amazingly robust delivering exceptionally high levels of availability and security. In the 4 years since the original launch, cloud computing has moved on significantly delivering improvements to performance, manageability and security.

Read more

Safe4 rolls out major update to leading secure document delivery solution

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We are very excited to announce the release of an updated version of the Safe4 secure file management solution. There have been many enhancements to the system both visible and behind the scenes to help improve the ease of use, performance and security.

The principal developments that our customers will be able to take advantage of in this update include:

  • One of the key benefits of Safe4 is the ability to quickly invite others to access a vault. We made this process simpler in the last update and in this new version we have improved the process further by creating a new screen to handle the sign up process. This is easier to use, and requires new users to provide less information making it easier to complete the process to be able to access the vault securely.
  • Safe4 has always provided a comprehensive audit trail – now the information in this audit trail has been unlocked by implementing a simple way to report on the activity in our customers’ vaults. The audit trail contains critical information and therefore access to this powerful facitlity has been secured with a further permission setting for provider users.
  • Increasingly applications in the cloud are being linked to day to day solutions to make the use of cloud applications a simple extension of normal work processes. We are pleased to announce that with this release we are providing a comprehensive Application Programming Interface (API) to enable third party applications to integrate seamlessly with Safe4.
  • Many users spend their days working in Microsoft Office. Until now it has been necessary to save documents onto a local disk or a network drive before uploading to Safe4 to deliver to clients. This has been simplfiied in the new release – it is now possible to map a network drive on your PC direct into Safe4 using a standard protocol called WebDAV. This provides a seamless means to access Safe4 and deliver information to clients and other business users. Unlike Dropbox, Box, Google Drive etc, this does not need any additional software to be installed on local PCs; it can be managed by  network administrators and maintains the audit trail, security and permissions that form the foundation of the Safe4 solution.  Importantly it means that the “Save As …” function in MS Office applications can now place documents direct into a Safe4 vault, and that when a file is opened using the Windows interface it can be edited and saved directly back into Safe4 as a new version.
  • It is now possible for users to define an email signature – this can help ensure that the communications sent from Safe4 are compliant with corporate policies for information confidentiality, disclaimers etc. The signature can also contain logos, links and pull information automatically from each user’s profile.
  • At the last release Safe4 added the ability to scan uploaded files for specific keywords, such as confidential, commercial in confidence, etc. This provides an effective barrier to unwanted information leakage. This facility has now been extended and files that are inside ZIP files are now also scanned, further enhancing the robustness and utility of this feature.
  • Behind the scenes a great deal of engineering work has been carried out to increase performance; some pages are now displayed 10 times faster, and security has been further improved.
  • We are also pleased to advise that this new version of Safe4 has undergone a comprehensive independent penetration test and has passed with flying colours.  More will be published on this very soon.

Safe4 has been growing steadily over the past 3 years, and usage records are being broken every month. It is an exciting time for Safe4, and we hope our customers continue to enjoy working with the system and delivering value to their clients. We obviously want to ensure that we meet our users’ expectations and welcome any feedback and suggestions for improvement.

Safe4 Announces the Release of Version 4.1

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Safe4 version 4.1 is a significant new release that has added a host of new capabilities to the system.  These include:

  • Refactored PIN entry and confirmation.  The login page looks a little different, and handles login data more securely.
  • Both username and password are case-sensitive when using the WebDAV connection facility.
  • A global timeout value of 30 minutes has been set.  This time period will commence from the last keystroke or mouse movement.  The timeout in earlier versions of Safe4 had a less well controlled timing value.
  • Removal of the need for a user to re-enter their PIN when accessing a PIN-controlled provider account or client vault after initial login using PIN.  This saves time when moving between client vaults that are secured by use of the PIN.
  • Improvements to File/Folder Search function – added folder information.  The appearance and clarity of the results screen have been improved.
  • Text in the subject line of email notification messages has been altered to include the provider name instead of “Safe4”.  Messages received by Safe4 users now have stronger provider branding.
  • An Archive facility has been added to allow all of the files and folders within a client vault to be downloaded as a single ZIP file for removal from the system, or for storage elsewhere within Safe4. This can enable very rapid and effective conclusion of a project, for instance, or a data room in the context of mergers and acquisitions.
  • A quick client search in the provider client management screen, with an alpha index at the top of the client list.  For providers with large numbers of client vaults, rapid access can be gained to the vault in question.
  • Change to the way in which clients lists are displayed, allowing the vault size and the number of files within each vault to be displayed on the provider client management screen.
  • A comments facility within the Single File Upload function, to add a narrative when uploading a new file, or a new version of an existing file.  This can be viewed by hovering over the filename after upload.  This is particularly helpful when adding a narrative to accompany the upload of a new version of a document.
  • Addition of the option to restrict the type of file that can be uploaded to a client vault, or at provider level, through an extension whitelist facility.  Only files with the permitted extension can be uploaded.
  • Ability to copy currently-registered users when a client vault is cloned.  Users will be able to see and access the new vault on their next login without requiring another invitation.
  • Ability to invite new users when a client vault is cloned, and for email message content to be added within the same function.
  • Rapid setup of new client vaults, with the ability to invite users as part of the vault creation process.  Email message content can also be added at this stage.  For the creation of new legal matters, this saves time and makes the process much simpler.
  • Improved screens for managing provider and client details, with tabbed separation of configuration parameters.
  • More flexible use of information fields within provider configuration.
  • Alteration of the provider client management screen display, to simplify the actions which can be performed on each client vault through an Actions button.  Access to vault users can be gained directly from this screen, without having to open up the vault in question.
  • Ability to select to view active or inactive client vaults within the provider client management screen.
  • The option to scan for protectively marked files.  This will scan uploaded file metadata for a specified text string, and if found will reject the uploaded file.  The uploading user and the nominated administrator will be advised by email of the failed attempt to upload.
  • The option to scan for password-protected files.  If a password is detected, the upload will be rejected.
  • When the file scanning option is selected, Safe4 will also check each uploaded file to ensure that the file format matches the extension.  Any which do not match, or have had their extension altered, will be rejected.  This will relate to commonly-used file formats only, such as MS Office, pdf, jpg.
  • The file details window (audit trail) will show provider users all file-related activities for all users, but for client users will only show their own activity.  Confidentiality is thus improved.
  • Within a client vault, when viewing the list of users the telephone number of each user is displayed as well as email address.
  • The method of viewing image files such as pdf and jpg has been altered. These files will now be displayed within a new browser tab.  Editable files, such as MS Office format files, will be opened using the native application as before.

Safe4 continue to enhance the platform and are already planning the content of the next release.

Reporting of carbon emissions is becoming an issue – and soon

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New legislation will shortly be putting pressure on many organisations to reduce their carbon footprint.  This applies to small and medium-sized companies too, if they are suppliers to either public-sector organisations, or corporates that fall within the scope of the UK Carbon Reduction Commitment requirements (annual energy expenditure of more than £500,000, or listed on the LSE main exchange).

But before any organisation can start to think about reporting on their carbon footprint, they must of course measure it – what is the starting point?  This will almost certainly involve the need for specialist skills and tools – hence the importance of the partnership between Safe4 and Co2conut.  Safe4 can assist with bringing down carbon emissions by reducing dependence on paper and hard-copy information deliveries; Co2conut can provide expert guidance, and access to tools that will help with the accurate measurement of current emissions.

How does this issue affect your business?  We would be glad to hear from anyone who has a view on this issue – please post your blog entry below.