An increasing number of major IT companies are now offering cloud-based computing services. Many of them are household names, often associated with the technologies we all use every day such as email, online shopping, and search engines. But are they ideal places to manage and store critical or confidential information?

Another instance of non-availability of cloud services has been highlighted in the media this week. Whilst every service provider may occasionally suffer from problems caused by human error, offering a high level of availability in conjunction with exceptional standards of security demands a different approach from that provided by many of the industry’s leading names. This approach is one of many factors that differentiates Safe4 from the majority of service providers who use cloud-based facilities.

Holding all customer data in UK-based data centres accredited to the ISO 27001 international standard for information security is not the cheapest way to make cloud-based services available, but that is the approach taken by Safe4. Equally, compliance with the requirements of regulatory bodies such as the UK’s Solicitors Regulation Authority is not easy or straightforward – but again, this is the path Safe4 has chosen to follow.

We would be delighted to provide you with more detail on how Safe4 can assist your business to manage confidential information safely and securely; please get in touch with us.

In October 2015 Safe4 launched the Digital Inheritance Vault at the Society of Will Writers annual Conference in Redditch, UK. Since then, the will writing community have been adopting the service in increasing numbers to offer it to their clients. One of the key benefits that the Vault provides is the ability to keep a record of all passwords and PINs in a completely secure place, visible only to the end client. This not only covers online accounts with banks, building societies, credit card providers, insurers and the like, but also social media accounts and physical devices such as computers, smartphones and tablets. The will-writer cannot gain access to this private information, but it can be released to the executor of the estate after the client’s death.

A recent case in Canada has demonstrated just how valuable such a service can be, as highlighted in the media this week. Whilst in this instance Apple have eventually agreed to open the iPad for the family, it took months of argument and aggravation at a time when the family was grieving. The contents of the iPad will almost certainly have no monetary value, but will contain cherished memories that can be enormously important to the family.

The Safe4 Digital Inheritance Vault makes provision for the recording of such information, and keeps it completely private. For more information on how the service works, please click here, or contact us. We will be delighted to assist you.

Proving that information has been accessed after it has been delivered can be a challenge. That is the main purpose of the detailed File History within Safe4, and it is proving to be of increasing value to customers and their clients.

Whether the activity in question is a complex corporate merger or acquisition, a personal inheritance plan, or updates to an insurance policy, it is often essential to know that the information in question has been received and opened. Sending printed documents in the post cannot provide this feedback, nor can sending documents as email attachments. The read-receipt provided by email systems does not confirm that the attachment has been opened, or even that it has not been deleted altogether.

Another benefit of the Safe4 audit trail is that it provides evidence that a confidential document has NOT been accessed by anyone other than an authorised person. This is especially valuable when deeply confidential information is being assembled in a private inheritance plan – it is impossible to prove that paper records have not been seen by someone they shouldn’t have, for example. The Safe4 Digital Inheritance Vault gives a level of security and confidentiality that can be difficult to achieve using other methods of managing information.

For more information on how using Safe4 can enhance the security of your private information, please get in touch with us. We will be delighted to assist.

Back in 2010, when we launched the company, we decided that all of the information held within Safe4 would be stored in UK-only data centres accredited to the ISO 27001 security standard. That decision has been vindicated on many occasions since, and has been given further weight by a recent ruling at the European Court of Justice. The inescapable verdict: if your data contains confidential or sensitive material, relying on US data privacy laws could put you at risk.

The EU has now been joined by Israel in recognising the flaws in the EU / US Safe Harbour agreement; Israel is now recommending that data containing personal information should not be transferred to the United States – click here to read more.

It is now widely acknowledged that the weakness of data privacy laws in the US can expose many types of organisation to unacceptable and unnecessary risk. In spite of this many businesses in the UK still use data services managed by some of the IT giants who are located in the US. Safe4 stores all of the data it holds within the UK, and does not use any US-located resources for any part of the management of the system.

For more information on how Safe4 can assist your business to maintain your own and your clients’ information in complete privacy, please contact us. We will be very pleased to help.