Long before the security breach at Equifax, companies and individuals have been plagued by growing threats from ransomware, malware, identity theft and computer viruses.
At S.J. Gorowitz Accounting and Tax Services, (SJG) keeping your accounting data safe is a huge priority. SJG recently secured services from a local technology company, Xcentric, LLC, to improve security and data redundancy. Based in Alpharetta, Xcentric specializes in data and application hosting for CPA firms across North America.
Xcentric is a continuously SOC-II audited company, meaning they undergo some of the strictest security policy auditing to ensure that data is physically and virtually locked down. Your data is secured in a series of state-of-the-art data centers (DC) designed to withstand the harshest of conditions meaning that in the event of a Category 4 hurricane or F3 tornado striking the data center directly, the building would withstand the worst Mother Nature can throw at it.
Entrance to the server floor requires photo ID, an escort, three sets of doors, biometric screening, and an appointment. Once on the server floor, all the “cages” containing servers are identical, meaning any attempt at nefarious activity targeting our data would require the deviant to know at exactly what point in the 185,000 square-foot facility the physical server they were trying to access was located.
Xcentric performs daily, weekly, monthly and annual data backups and stores data redundantly to a separate data facility. Administrative rights for Xcentric staff are tightly managed and audited to ensure the possibility of human error is minimal.
For SJG, Xcentric will make sure that our offices computers are always up to date with the latest security patches and Windows updates and that our data and servers are kept secure in the cloud.
When you interact with SJG staff, you will find safeguards in place for all files and other resources, beginning with the industry-leading firewalls that protect our infrastructure. All email communications, both internal and external will be fully secured and encrypted, both in transit and at rest, using enterprise-grade solutions from Mimecast. Additionally, you will benefit from our rigorous adherence to the most up-to-date best practices for password protection and secure transfer of files and other data, including two-factor authentication.
Certainly, some of this will present a change in the way you are accustomed to sharing information with our team but rest assured that we will work together to minimize any difficulty you may experience adjusting to our new encryption and secure file transfer capabilities.
