Kimetrica Security Practices, Policies & Infrastructure
Security and data protection are paramount for us. We take security very seriously and have developed a comprehensive set of practices, technologies and policies to help ensure your data is secure. If you are currently maintaining your data on personal computers or your own servers, the odds are that we offer a better level of security than what you currently have in place. This document outlines some of the mechanisms and processes we have implemented to help ensure that your data is protected. Our security practices are grouped in four different areas: Physical Security; Network Security; People Processes and Redundancy and Business Continuity.Security
Our data centers, managed by GoGrid, are hosted in some of the most secure facilities available today in locations that are protected from physical and logical attacks as well as from natural disasters such as earthquakes, fires, floods, etc. The data centers include:
- Fire Safety - a grid of "VESDA" AnaLASER laser smoke sensors, with 200 located on the ceiling and 200 located under the raised floor
- Power Failures Contingencies - dual 2 Megawatt generators (that also support critical phone equipment) with 20,000 gallons of reserve diesel fuel at each site
- Network Connections - OC-12 and Gigabit connections from UUNet, Level 3, NTT/Verio, AboveNet, and peer with 40 networks at PAIX
- World-wide Server Hardware Power - several thousand dedicated servers in more than 100 countries worldwide
- Network Operations Center (NOC) - state-of-the-art monitoring system controlling everything from network traffic and performance to power, temperature and security systems to services, applications, known vulnerabilities and RAID array status on customer servers
- 24 x 7 Security Guards
- 24 x 7 Systems Administrators / NOC on data center floors
Network Operations Center
GoGrid’s Network Operations Center (NOC) is built right in the center of its data center floor, and is staffed 24/7/365 by certified systems administrators and network engineers.
- Large on-site NOC with 24/7 Engineers
- Real-time monitoring and alerts for all critical systems
- Customer level service and application monitoring
People Processes
Designing and running data server infrastructure requires not just technology, but a disciplined approach to processes. This includes policies about escalation, management, knowledge sharing, risk, as well as the day-to-day operations. Kimetrica's security team has years of experience in designing and managing data centers and continually improves our processes over time. Kimetrica has developed a world class practices for managing security and data protection risk.
- Select Employees. Only employees with the highest clearance have access to our data center data. Employee access is logged and passwords are strictly regulated. We limit access to customer data to only a select few of these employees who need such access to provide support and troubleshooting on our customers' behalf.
- Audits. Audits are regularly performed and the whole process is reviewed by management
- As-Needed Basis. Accessing data center information as well as customer data is done on an as-needed only basis, and only when approved by the customer (i.e. as part of a support incident), or by senior security management to provide support and maintenance.
Redundancy and Business Continuity
One of the fundamental philosophies of computing is the acknowledgment and assumption that computer resources will at some point fail. We have designed our systems and infrastructure with that in mind.
- Distributed Grid Architecture. Kimetrica services run on distributed grid architecture. That means a server can fail without a noticeable impact on the system or our services. In fact, on any given week, multiple servers fail without our customers ever noticing it. The system has been designed knowing that servers will eventually fail - we have implemented our infrastructure to account for that.
- Power Redundancy. Kimetrica configures its servers for power redundancy from power supply to power delivery.
- Internet Redundancy. Kimetrica is connected to the world - and you through multiple Tier-1 ISPs. So if any one fails or experiences a delay, you can still reliably get to your applications and information.
- Redundant Network Devices. Kimetrica runs on redundant network devices (switches, routers, security gateways) to avoid any single point of failure at any level on the internal network.
- Redundant Cooling and Temperature. Intense computing resources generate a lot of heat, and thus need to be cooled to guarantee a smooth operation. GoGrid servers are backed by N+2 redundant HVAC systems and temperature control systems.
- Geo Mirroring. Customer data is mirrored in a separate geographic location for Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity purposes.
- Fire Prevention. The GoGrid data centers are guarded by industry-standard fire prevention and control systems.
- Data Protection & Back-up. User data is backed-up daily across multiple servers - and in different data centers -- helping protect the data in the event of hardware failure of disaster.