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T-Mobile UK experienced earlier this week a massive breach into its data base: a yet undisclosed number of customers records have been stolen and, most likely, sold to an unidentified third party.

“The number of records involved runs into the millions and it appears that substantial amounts of money changed hands”, said in a document Britain’s Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) acknowledging the breach. The data included customers’ personal information and contract expiration dates. The UK’s Data Protection Act prohibits the selling of data without prior permission from the owner. The ICO said in its report that it believes T-Mobile competitors used the information to call customers prior to the expiration of their contracts and offer them deals with a new operator.

Well. guess what: the thief was a T-Mobile UK insider, not some random hacker looking for easy money. This fact highlights the problem of the threat posed by insiders, especially during an uncertain global economy, which has resulted in layoffs and mergers.

When Swiss DNA Bank’s storage system was designed, one of the questions was: who can access the data our uses will upload? The answer we came up with was no one except its legitimate owner. Our service provides a digital safety box only the user can access. There is no way an insider could ever enter a Forever account and share its content with a third party. It is just impossible.

That is because there are three separate keys to decrypt the information and each one is in a different Swiss DNA Bank’s trustee hands. Because your privacy is always our priority.

The Ancient Library of Alexandria was the largest and best-known human knowledge magnet of all times. It was built under the Ptolemaic dynasty around III century BC and destroyed under mysterious circumstances under the Roman ruling. Some say that maybe it was Julius Caesar itself who burned the library down.

The loss was of catastrophic proportions: something between 40.000 and 100.000 books have been destroyed, turning into ashes thousands of years of history, literature and world facts.

In the early Seventies the idea of reviving the old library started taking place and a specific committee was set up to discuss the project. The new Library of Alexandria was to rise exactly on the same spot where its predecessor was burned down centuries before: between the University’s campus and the seafront.

UNESCO, together with the Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak gave the project full support. The Mediterranean was to be endowed with a new and great cultural center.

The library was inaugurated in 2002 and hosts approximately eight million books and features a 70.000 square meter reading room.

The rise, fall and rise again after so many centuries of the Library of Alexandria is probably the greatest, even though it is just one out of many, of the examples of the strong link that runs between humans and their culture, their heritage.

As soon as writing was invented life and its events have been registered. The supports have changed dramatically over time: rocks, wax boards, animal skins, paper…

Techniques have changed, but the aim was always that of preserving our memories.

Today computers are the evolution of the ancient papyrus that once filled Alexandria’s library. Producing and recording data has become technically faster and easier, flooding hard drives world round with information.

It is often difficult to understand the importance of a secure back-up of all these files, pictures and documents, of our life’s record.

Swiss DNA Bank is the ultimate tool for data recovery: a 21st century Library of Alexandria safely embedded in the Swiss Alps in a nuclear-proof shelter.

No modern Julius Caesar will break into this data storage facility!

As paperwork quickly disappears from our drawers and digital data storing becomes increasingly crucial in everyday personal and business life, not everyone realizes how important could be to know where your back-up servers are physically located.

Think about all those letters you have on your web-mail provider account.

What happens if the service disappears for one reason or the other. Where or who can you turn to to recover them?

This might not be an issue one thinks about every day, but many Aussies might have had the taught last wednesday.

On Sept. 2nd, Australia disappeared from the www for a whole hour, between 7.50 and 8.50 am local time reported the Sydney Morning Herald. Telsta, by far the country’s number one ISP, suffered from a major crash which affected home, business and mobile  internet customers.

Telstra customers could not access any international sites or Australian sites containing international links. Since Telstra’s customers also include most down under ISPs, most of the country was affected.

The problem apparently was caused by Telstra’s international gateway, which lost the ability to find the domain names of international websites.

The technical difficulty was most likely solved with the classic home-style turn-off-turn-on-the-switch procedure.

No damage done, but we should all stop and think that even though our stuff feels like it’s on our computer, it’s actually not. Thousands of miles usually separate us from our mails, documents or pictures.

A safe data storage provider should be able to indicate precisely the server’s location and be transparent on panic data recovery procedure.

If we talk about “sandboxing”, happy memories of childhood games in the garden will come to mind.

But when talking about computers and applications, this term refers to a very powerful security feature that separates running programs. This is very important for service/application providers. Anyone that offers a web-based service is potentially under risk of being attacked by hackers or third parties interested in gaining the information that’s been transferred from the user to the server during uploading and vice versa during downloading.

When Swiss DNA Bank’s developing team was crating the application, the number one priority was always to give users the maximum level of security possible due to the company’s concern with the customers’ privacy issues.

The only way to provide 100% guarantees that the data would not be intercepted by malicious third parties was to rely on two separate servers: one on which the application is running and another one on which the data is stored. The two servers are completely independent and physically located in two different venues. The only connection occurs during data uploading and downloading, a phase in which everything is protected by the highest encryption standards.

In addition, the keys to decryption and the encrypted data are saved in physically separated machines, so that even if a system engineer gains access to one of the servers it is impossible for him to enter the Forever database.

Another plus of this security solution is that in case of an application crash occurs due to a very high number of access, there is no risk of data loss or damaging because everything is saved on the separate and highly secure Forever server.

The risk with the average available cloud computing (services which, like Swiss DNA Bank, provide a software that users access form a browser instead of downloading it on their computer), is that you do not know for sure wether the application and the data are on the same server and where the server is physically located. Since data can sometimes be backed-up on one’s computer but is usually hosted on the cloud, in case of a system crash there are no security guarantees concerning a safe back-up procedure.

Unlike most services, thanks to the multiple server solution and localized Forever data storage, Swiss DNA Bank is able to provide a 100% secure service for a risk-free storage.

September 1st 2009 is a very important day in Swiss DNA Bank’s history. It’s the day the staff finally pulled the strings on a very intensive two-years project development. Everything came together and the “put-the-web-application-on-line-button” was pushed.

The dream of creating the first data and DNA forever banking service came to life.

The idea was always to create a bank, a Swiss bank, which followed each and every security and privacy policy of our country. But what was going to be sheltered in this bank was not money or bonds. Was something much more precious and unique: it was people’s memories and DNA.

As Swiss DNA Bank’s website often states, one’s life experience, knowledge and memories are the most important asset we have. It takes a lifetime to build them.

On the other hand, our DNA trace is something that belongs only to ourselves. The health information contained are crucial not only for the carrier, but also for it’s family. Knowing your biological ancestry can help you prevent or cure many disease. But at the end of one’s life these assets are most likely going to be lost. Our children, our grandchildren and the ones that will come after them are deprived of the chance of getting to know who we where, what we’ve done and what we’ve learned.

This is where the idea of the Perpetual Financial Engine comes from.

The Perpetual Financial Engine feature is the reason why Swiss DNA Bank’s service is Forever. As of today, there is no technological support that you are sure it will be readable in even just 10 or 15 years time. Think about a floppy disc or an audio cassette.

So we figured that the solution to perpetual data storage is not technological, but financial.

The Perpetual Financial Engine, together with a long-lasting and safe structure of a Swiss bank, is the key to being able of founding tomorrow’s technological support renewal.

The user’s subscription fee is partially invested in safe assets, such as Swiss government bonds, in order to guarantee a small revenue, year after year, which allows to keep our storing facilities up to date.

When this whole picture came together, it was time to think of a safe way to store it all. The solution fort the physical storage of the servers which contain the data came from the heart of the Swiss Alps, from a former military nuclear shelter which was converted into server hosting facility.

Once Swiss DNA Bank’s servers were safe behind closed steel doors, the attention turned to on-line security.

The web-development team figured that username and password were not enough to protect such sensible data. So each Swiss DNA Bank user is provided with a Swiss DNA Card, a credit card sized one-time access code generator. The one-time access code is the third field one has to fill to enter the Swiss DNA Bank web application, an amazing tool to organize memories, pictures, documents, and any other file you can think of.

Take a look at your desk. Open some drawers randomly. Check your computer’s desktop. And what about the office’s shelves? Unless you are one of those people naturally gifted with full organizational skills, at least one of those places is a real mess.

And if you are organized, this will be your ultimate tool!

Now you can store it all, safely and Forever.

http://www.swissdnabank.com/

Internet surfers and social network addicts: take a moment to thank Canada for fighting and winning a privacy battle for us all.

Ever took a closer look at that little box you tick before starting the “Which Famous Rock Star are You” or the “How Karmic are You” test on Facebook?

Don’t if you don’t want to feel exposed, naked and cheated on. Data exposed, naked and cheated on, that is.

Because what happens is that in exchange for vital information such as who your superhero twin is you allow “third parties”, typically the application’s (test’s) developer, to access your personal information, letting you wonder what they are going to do with it.

I’m thinking targeting the ads upon your profile, but maybe I’m just being malicious.

Being most of us users reckless and carefree about our info, Canada decided to do something about it. One year ago an Internet policy group at the University of Ottawa filed a complaint about Facebook’s privacy policies, which now resulted in Facebook having 12 months time to do something major about it.

The well-know social network will have to make significant changes to the software code it shares with third-party developers, in order to warn users about which bits of information are being disclosed and to whom exactly.

Dave Morin, senior platform manager at Facebook, sympathizes with the developers who are now facing software-changing issues.

“These changes mean that the privacy of 200 million Facebook users in Canada and around the world will be far better protected,” Jennifer Stoddart, Canada’s privacy commissioner, said in a statement.

Another important thing is that the mystery over deactivating and deleting one’s account will be unveiled. If you decide not to use the Facebook application anymore you will most likely bounce into the “deactivate account” option. This only blocks your account temporarily, leaving all your information in their Palo Alto servers. If you want to delete it, it gets more complicated. To find the right option I had to access the Help Center, type “delete” and scroll down the FAQ quite a bit. The link to delete was, in my opinion, kind of hidden. Maybe there’s another easier way but I guess I was not Internet-savvy enough to figure it out

Today personal information is like cash, only (or shall we say, plus?) without inflation: it is precious, it is hard to get, it is desirable. If you must give yours up and spill the beans about your age, lifestyle and interests, at least make it worth your while!

Unless you really need to know who your celebrity boyfriend is.

Just when you taught things were getting a little shaky for world-renowned Swiss privacy, Bern’s government reminds everyone that it’s not that easy to lay hands on the country’s most valuable asset.

After recent settlements between the US, Switzerland and UBS to disclose Irs cheaters, Bern backfires on Google. Well, it’s not really backfire, it’s more about reminding who is in charge for Swiss privacy on Swiss soil, i.e. the Swiss government.

Switzerland has recently signed an agreement with the US government to disclose about 4.500 names of American citizens UBS account holders because of tax evasion charges.

It is important to understand that this is an agreement, meaning that when the most powerful and pushy government in the world attacked the Swiss banking system, Switzerland was nevertheless able to answer back to America.

So some names will be disclosed but strictly after Bern analyzes the paperwork that proves these US citizens with Swiss bank accounts guilty as charged.

But there was no settlement when Google’s Swiss mapping service failed to obscure faces and plates properly yesterday. After the Swiss Street View was released on-line, Hanspeter Thur, from the federal bureau of data protection, required the Mountain View-based giant to stop the service immediately as Swiss privacy laws have not been respected.

The reason was that Google failed to warn citizens about the Google Car transit dates and time and, worst of all, failed to obscure people’s faces and car’s plates.

This has nothing to do with the service’s ban, it is all about respecting local privacy laws and regulations.

One of the biggest scandals was that the face of a Swiss Government’s member was actually photographed while walking around town with his assistant.

Google acted surprised by Switzerland’s reaction, even though it had to admit that the obscuration software is still failing to do its job once in a wile.

While engineers work on getting that one fixed, Switzerland decided it is better to shield its citizens and visitors from Big brother’s indiscrete eye.

Visiting Swiss Fort Knox, Swiss DNA Bank’s storage partner

First comes a nice walk in Gstaad, one of the best-known and more exclusive skiing resorts in Switzerland.

Than comes a short and charming car ride.

Than comes a tiny iron door on the wall of the mountain next to Gstaad’s airport.

And then it’s like being in a James Bond movie. It’s a petty comparison, ok, but it gives the idea.

When Swiss DNA Bank’s officials where looking for a strong data storage partner the key world was: high standard Swiss security.

What can be more Swiss and more secure than a nuclear shelter embedded in the Swiss Alps?

Yes, Swiss Fort Knox data storage center happens to be located inside a former military nuclear shelter. Mr. Christoff Oschwald, one of the two parters which own the company, blended his IT and military background and created this unique server hosting facility.

Prior to the visit, which is privilege for customers and selected press, one must fill a request form. Than getting in is an experience in between boarding an airplane and waiting in line for an adventure Disneyland ride. Only this is for real.

A security guard, which accompanies the visitors throughout the tour, is in charge for ID checking, metal-detector inspection and weighting you. A strange but important procedure: it is the safest and fastest way to check wether you are heavier on your way out - that is, are taking something away from the facility.

Than the James Bond-like part starts: long corridors dug in the bare mountain’s rock lead the way to some times small, some times huge chambers. The servers are located at the heart of the facility and the number of half-a-meter- thick iron doors is impressive.

Swiss DNA Bank’s servers are located in the main server storage area. The environment is constantly cooled down by the water that flows from the glacier on top of the mountain, keeping the the inside temperature ideal for the machine’s well-functioning.

Swiss Fort Knox is a veteran in secure data storage providing, so together with such an infrastructure was Swiss DNA Bank’s obvious partnership choice.

If you are lucky enough to enter the facility, you’ll most likely receive the ultimate treat after the tour: a drink at the sky bar: Gstaad’s airport former control tower, which sticks out of the mountain’s side. Even the finale was really James Bond. I wanted to ask for a Martini, “shaken, not stirred”.

For further information on Swiss Fort Knox’s facility: www.swissfortknox.ch

No matter how much you paid your computer, how carefully, you store your CDs, how gentle you treat to your pen driver, sooner or later they’re going to break down, blow up or become obsolete support.

Take a regular sunday night home cinema experience: just a few years ago it was totally different. Not only because we had to wait the late Eighties for microwave popcorn, but also because our movies came in a big black box. The videotape.
Try find a VCR today to watch the kid’s first trip to Disneyland or that 1985 Back to the Future cassette. That recorder will play hard to get hiding in grandma’s cellar.

Personal information value is skyrocketing: any company today is ready to trick you into controversial terms of use to grant themselves access to your data and make it valuable B to B currency. So the key world to data storage is… professional data storage.

Surfing the web you realize that many companies are offering this kind of service. But what is it you need to look for to get good service and conditions? Here are the top features to look for in a data storage service:

Feature Set Practical features make uploading, storing, accessing and sharing your files easy. Online storage services should offer remote access, public and private file sharing, scheduled backup. All in an easy-to-use and clear layout.

Security Security is exceptionally important when storing data. Online storage services should offer encrypted file transfer and password protection. Latest technologies provide one-time-access code generator devices, more popular in e-banking than data storage. Technology is always improving, so it is important to choose the latest features available and not to compromise. Especially when it comes to your data’s privacy!

Service fees The top online storage services are not the free ones. Many big names free-of-charge services are shutting down because of the collapse of the ads market, which provided the cash to keep the services up and running. In order not to risk losing you data, it is safer to rely on a provider that charges you for the service. Hardware update is also crucial for good data maintenance. This can be done only by a company that has an steady income from its users. Advertisment is not someting you can relyon nowadays. Yahoo learned it the hard way: its GeoCities service, which provided free websites to its users, will be shut down Oct. 29th 2009 for this reason. users have been advised to move all their data on Yahoo’s pay-for service.

Ease of Use Online storage services should be user–friendly and not require a lot of instruction in order to upload and access files. Anyone should be able to learn the basic functions of the service in minutes.

Help/Support Good help and support is necessary with any service. Online storage services should provide self–help through FAQs, user manuals and tutorials. They should also provide customer support through email.