As specialists in business software development, security is of paramount importance in all of our applications, and we apply exactly the same stringent security policies to our websites.
Many people prefer to pay online using a PayPal account, rather than enter their card details online, and it’s often a major factor in their choice of supplier. As a close second, people also have much more confidence in recognised UK payment service providers, such as WorldPay and SagePay, than any others.
These payment considerations are only the very obvious tip of a much larger security iceberg, at witnessed by the extent to which people’s personal data is stolen.
Online System Security
At Net4orce, we have been developing secure online business software for the last decade, and conventional business software for much longer, so we are very familiar with computer and software security, especially in online systems.
Online systems offer very significant business advantages over in-house systems. The most obvious, and the most important, is that they can be accessed from anywhere and at any time, day or night, and from any type of device. Less obvious, but equally important, online systems require less investment and are cheaper and simpler to maintain than their in-house equivalents.
A well designed online system is also immeasurably more secure than an in-house system. In-house systems are much more susceptible to data theft, either by direct physical access, from a PC, or via a local area network. In contrast, online systems exist as anonymous entities in a secure data centre. Technical access to these servers is solely by remote connection, which is only available to a very limited number of authorised users.
Other visitors can only access the online system via the application using a normal internet browser. This enables stringent controls and monitoring to be applied to all of the user operations. Every change made to the system and to its data is also logged, so every user can be held fully to account.
Website Security
We apply exactly the same security measures to our websites, so security is integral to their design, rather than being an add-on or an optional extra. If a website needs a secure client or member area, then it’s merely a matter of limiting access to that area to specific users with individual passwords.
As an added security precaution, we only host websites and online business systems that we have developed on our web servers. Most of the standard software that we employ on our servers is from Microsoft, servers, SQL, .Net, C#, etc., and the rest is only from highly reputable software developers.