Throughout the years, many people and organizations struggled with leaks or lost data, resulting in loss of customers, revenue and reputation, not to mention legal consequences. At this day and age, storing data varies from facial recognition thanks to AI and improved technology, to details about your bank account or address, which we don’t want to disclose. Whether you store your personal information, products and projects yet to be released or customer details – you should make sure all of it is properly saved and backed up.

Some of the most memorable breaches due to backup issues, like the UK prison system, where sensitive information about over 80K inmates has been leaked out, still weren’t a lesson for some. Even last year, over a decade after some of the largest data loss incidents, CashApp suffered a breach that resulted in leaking personal details about 8.2 million clients and losing information they won’t be able to get back.

Whether in this form or another, the word “backup” simply should ring a bell to everyone these days. Essentially, it is a process of moving your data to a secure location. As an example, that being an USB stick or a remote server, it is used to store your original data and prevent the possible loss of it. Easily accessible storage is a convenient way for successfully saving and retrieving your data, which is a solid foundation to any online business. Nevertheless, you have to consider that in some cases it can also be accessed by an intruder, that’s why we recommend to distribute your data to a few secure locations.

We are aware that this may be a lengthy process for some, but it is also absolutely crucial to protect your data. Due to the amount of breaches and consequences mentioned above, we offer R1Soft Backups For WHMCS to help prevent that happening to your most valuable asset – your clients.

As stated earlier, well executed security plays a large role in building a successful business, not least in terms of fostering rock-solid customer relationships, which is why R1Soft Backups For WHMCS focuses specifically on providing your clientele with R1Soft Server Backup Manager accounts configurable in every key aspect, such as the size or the type and level of compression. At the same time, you will get to create as many R1Soft packages as it feels right for you as well as perform basic management right where the pulse of your business is most felt – in your WHMCS.

With all of that in mind, we are hoping you will always be cautious and make sure your data is stored in a safe place. Don’t hesitate to check out our module and invite the future of server data protection to your offer!

In response to the global threat of data breaches and ever more privacy violations committed in a digital sphere, the countries worldwide mobilize each year on 28th January to foster strong awareness and promote current best practices in widely approached protection of online safety. The Data Privacy Day leads an international initiative to fully recognize the long-term impact on the society of the established customs of data collecting and sharing. The ultimate objective is to educate individuals on how to safely define and control their online presence, and guide companies how privacy kept intact works greatly in favor of their business integrity.

The ideological focus of this irreproachable campaign continually expands, inspiring not only dialogue but also decisive actions on many instrumental levels. In the information technology field, the chief effort is targeted at tackling the shortage in sufficiently advanced software aimed to render the safe data storage and management less of a challenge, and more of an effortless habit.

Among the wide choice of techniques commonly deployed to preserve online privacy, encryption of personal data is regarded as the absolute fundamentals. As early as almost two decades ago, Lawrence Lessig, in its revealing book, Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace, hailed encryption technologies as „the most important technological breakthrough in the last one thousand years”. Whether Lessig exaggerated or not, we leave it for you to decide, but he surely have got a point, placing well-deserved emphasis on the prominent role of encryption in today’s digitally dominated world.

Simply put, encryption converts pieces of information into another form or code, so that only people who own a decryption key or password can access them. It comes in a great number of types, each with a different mechanism to obscure the data into unreadable content. A popular criterion to classify software encryption is the central purpose it fulfills. From this perspective, technology may be grouped into the tools that encrypt “data in transit” and ones that encrypt “data at rest”. The basic difference between them is that the first encryption category pertains to transfers of information, while the second one deals with its storage. Whether they travel across the Internet or through a private network, data is quite rightly considered less secure while in motion, and thus, strict encryption measures for in-transit details are nothing short of a must when building a software armor.

To fully grasp the concept of data transit, simply think of the last time you shared some password with your colleagues using the most ordinary channel possible – an email. Now, imagine the consequences of this tiny string of characters falling into the wrong hands. A direct blow to your reputation and brand image, hordes of frustrated customers, not to mention the organizational mayhem or, in the worst-case scenario, the complete closure of your business. Terrifying, isn’t it? To prevent any of this from happening, robust software with a sophisticated encryption formula should be implemented and actively used. The tool worthy of careful note in this regard is Password Manager For WHMCS that features two-way encryption keys converting the sensitive information into code on the fly, so that only its unreadable format is saved in the database. Having the passwords under such top-level protection, neither any storing nor sharing operations will pose a real risk to the enterprise and its clientele.

In the face of ever new social networks to be launched, new applications to be released, and new experiences to be had deep in a digital realm, we all bear a heavy responsibility to embrace all irreversible outcomes of this evolution and ensure that any cyber-valuables we care of are protected both when stored and across transit endpoints. The application of space-age encryption technology is a box all smart companies need to check, no matter their size.

Have you already checked yours?

In honor of World Backup Day that falls on March 31st, we wish to share with you our winning formula for maintaining foolproof data protection.

What you should do in the first place is realize that it is not just computers that serve as a data repository anymore. These are also smartphones, tablets and plenty of different devices in everyday use that store huge amounts of information, the loss of which might turn out severely damaging to either your personal or business sphere (or both!). It is therefore of utmost importance to think ahead and ensure the perfect safety of documents, photos, videos, emails and absolutely anything of digital kind that you value.

So how exactly can you prepare for the unexpected? A whole myriad of options exists for you to protect your files against any loss. The more of these methods you introduce to your usual routine, the smaller the risk of ever suffering the trauma of data disappearance will be.

Simply put, a backup is an exact copy of your intangible valuables. Instead of keeping them all in a single place, you store a separate copy of each file somewhere safe. Conventional wisdom has it that your digital content can be utterly secured upon the adoption of the backup rule of three, also known as the 3-2-1 rule:

1. Have at least 3 copies of your data (i.e. two backup files in addition to the original content).
2. Store the backups on 2 different media types (such as USB drives, optical media, SD-cards, external and internal hard drives, etc.).
3. Keep 1 backup off-site (ensure that the copies are saved on physically separated devices – the farther the better!).

Take some time to cruise through different backup mechanisms and alternative solutions like this one, to decide which approach suits you and your clients the most. Regardless of your choice, keep in mind: it is not just about backups, it is about your personal well-being and business continuity!

WHMCS Analyzer has been created to help you monitor the shape of your technical infrastructure in a very detailed fashion. The script has been armed with a wide scope of advanced algorithms to scan your system and server environment from every angle possible. This way, you can easily determine its current status and address any suspicious aspects before they inflict any damage to your business. The examination outcome will also prove useful for assessing to what extend your WHMCS has been modified, i.e. how many custom files it contains.

Download the script entirely for FREE to keep a finger on the pulse of your system operation and run your business without any risk of technical failure!

Learn More!

DDoS attacks have become one of the most common disastrous attacks on the Internet. The number of attacks along with their size and intensity has increased substantially: in the space of just last year 57% rise in total DDoS attacks have been reported. That is why we want to share with you some of practical tips to defend against DDoS attacks and actions worth taking while experiencing the attack to minimize losses:

1. One of the well-known approaches to handling DDoS attacks is over-provisioning. In order to scotch the attack and reduce its impact on your clients you need to provision for far more traffic than you usually expect to receive. How much should be enough? Estimate the largest amount of traffic that you have ever had, multiply it by ten and adapt your hardware infrastructure to cope with this level of traffic. It will make much more difficult for an attacker to generate enough traffic to bring down your company’s network.

2. If you are experiencing DDoS attack you need to consider disconnecting from a network. It will result in taking your business off-line and cutting off access to all your products and services but at the same time it will prevent from further utilizing network resources.

3. Additionally, you can perform DNS redirection by changing an “A” record which provides servers with the IP address of your domain. Keep in mind that you have to notify your clients about it so they can enter new IP address in order to keep using services of current network provider. This method is as effective as quickly DNS propagation is proceeded. It may take even a few hours and often requires a direct contact with a hosting service provider.

4. IP addresses are cached by servers around the world for a specific period of time (measured in seconds) which is known as “Time to live” (TTL). Usually, default TTL value is 86400 seconds (24 hours), which may be far too long if you are under DDoS attack. You can reduce losses by controlling TTL value: the shorter TTL value, the quicker you will be able to redirect all web site requests to a new IP address. You need to, however, bear in mind that shorter TTL value means more frequent requests which, in turn, increases the load on your DNS host.

5. Changing DNS or even migrating to another server may be not sufficient to completely resolve the problem. If an attacker finds out what your intentions are, the attack will be redirected to a new target and everything may start all over again. Therefore, it is also worth giving some thought to cloud-based traffic scrubbing services which are able to quickly filter out malicious software from data stream. Data cleansing service providers are the first line of defence against high-volume DDoS attacks – they have sufficient bandwidth and proper tools to filter network traffic which stems DDoS packets within the cloud and pass normal traffic to the company network.

6. You may also take into consideration some additional services, such as CloudFlare. They monitor network traffic and collect data that are used as a basis to assess the risk of possible attacks. Thanks to this, each attack attempt is thwarted before it does any damage. What is more, in case of a serious attack, they are able to restore a webpage and revert back any negative changes using previously made backup files. This way, users may not even notice the malfunction.

Destructive power of DDoS attacks cannot be disregarded. Every company needs to ensure its sustained operation and resource availability by remaining vigilant and taking all possible measures to mitigate the risk of being hit before it happens.

Recently we have added a completely new functionality to all of our ticket’s submitting forms. This is a nice, green field with ‘Secure Message’ title.

All data filled in that field are additionally encrypted and stored on a secured server. In this way, your confidential data, like access details to your system, will be even safer than before.

Do not hesitate to make good use of this attribute!

And so it happened. Today we finished the first phase of the plan through reorganising our whole server and network structure, and applying security improvements. That will result in minimization the risk of downtimes and interruptions in the delivery of services. But most importantly, we finished the massive update of all the modules to implement a far better license verification mechanisms. In this way, even if the licensing servers are down, the proper work of your modules will not be interrupted.

To benefit from the mentioned improvements you will need to upgrade your modules. To do so, simply log in to our client area, download the latest versions released today (29.08.2014) and follow this simple instruction.

Please note, that you do not have to update the modules, but it is highly recommended.  In case you do not update your modules, we can not guarantee you the adequate stability at the time of serious server failures. However, they will work correctly. The decision belongs to you but we are convinced that there is no reason to postpone this task.

Soon, we will implement additional improvements like for example secure message system into our ticket system. It will further enhance the safety of your valuable data provided in the tickets. We will keep you posted.