Wow. You're brilliant. I mean, since your information and data is hosted by a company that can set up their servers anywhere, gee, I'm sure they couldn't POSSIBLY have their helpdesk for all clients located somewhere OTHER than the client location. Think outside your empty box. Data anytime, anywhere. I used to work for an oil company and we had our helpdesk and datacenter located in a building on Westheimer in Houston, Texas while our Oil Field Service Managers were on every continent. Helpdesk was 24/7 due to time zone requirements. This is not a new concept.

Many people who use SimDesk share your concern about the privacy of their information. In fact, that is often a key reason why they use SimDesk (and one of the reasons I chose to work at SimDesk).

SimDesk takes a lot of pride in developing secure products. One example of that is shown in how we do our file encryption.

By default, all of your files that sit on our World Wide Server are encrypted with 128-bit AES encryption. This encryption is quite a bit stronger than the old DES and Triple-DES used by many other products. Please see question 15 on this FAQ from NIST for more details about the strength of AES - http://csrc.nist.gov/CryptoToolkit/aes/aesfact.htm l
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For the record, our customers have the option of replacing it with something stronger, or even their own algorithm if they prefer. AES is our default because it is a proven algorithm which has undergone quite a bit of testing by people much smarter than I. This is why AES has been certified by NIST to replace DES - http://cio.doe.gov/ITReform/ArchitectureStandards/ stds_activity/FIPS197.htm.

Further, the files are actually encrypted on your computer before they are even sent over the internet. This has a nice benefit - your files are stored on the World Wide Server in that same encrypted form. This protects your privacy by making your sensitive information that much more resistant to hackers.

I invite you to read the white paper I wrote about our security at http://www.simdesk.com/thought_leadership/white_pa pers/pdf/security.pdf . We are always striving to make our products more secure, and we would appreciate any comments or suggestions that you might have.

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Mark Radulovich, CISSP, NSA/IAM
Director of Strategic Analysis
SimDesk Technologies, Inc.