As we progress ever deeper into the Digital Age, the majority of South Africans are still hesitant to embrace the Digital realm, especially when it comes down to sharing their personal information and sensitive data online. Although companies go to extremes to make sure sensitive consumer data is kept secure, frequent headlines regarding leaked data and the digitally conservative nature of South Africans in general, has bred a deep sense of mistrust in digital innovations altogether.
According to The South African, 83% of South Africans have doubts regarding the vulnerability of their data and a further 94% are concerned about the safety of their identity. These numbers are staggering and in some cases valid when taking into consideration the data breaches that have been reported at big companies in the past few years. Although no infrastructure is ever 100% secure, at Swipe iX we go out of our way to ensure all networks are as secure as can be, and to align ourselves with companies known for being reliable, safe and secure, such as Amazon Web Services.
AWS takes pride in the fact that consumer trust has long been their top priority, thus they build their products and services around this pivotal attribute. Through their vast collection of powerful tools, AWS enables users to effortlessly control where their content is stored and secures the aforementioned content both in transit and at rest. They also implement a variety of advanced physical and technical controls to prevent unauthorized content access and mitigate cyber threats.
AWS realises that consumer trust is not a given, but rather needs to be earned on a continuous basis, thus they have numerous commitments in place to ensure that users can feel safe when entrusting AWS products and services with their sensitive data. These commitments are divided into 5 main categories:
Consumers maintain full control of their content and how others might gain access to the AWS resources and services used. AWS provides customers with advanced encryption and logging features to ensure customers are able to safely use AWS services and deploy and develop products securely in the AWS environment. Some of these security features include AWS; Identity and Access Management, Organizations and CloudTrail. These features and tools ensures that all consumer access requires consumer consent before being derived and that all data is protected from marketing or advertising exploitation.
AWS gives customers full control over the type of storage being used as well as the Regions the data will be stored in. Furthermore data can be duplicated and backed up in more than one AWS Region if the customer chooses to do so.
AWS enables all customers to choose how their data is secured through various data encryption options (Elastic Block Store, Simple Storage Service, Relational Database Services and Redshift) flexible key management options (AWS Key Management or customer controlled key management), and even Server-Side Encryption capabilities (S3-managed keys, KMS-Managed Keys or SSE with Customer-Provided Encryption Keys).
Customer data is never disclosed unless Amazon is required to do so in order to comply with a legally valid and binding order. Furthermore, Amazon notifies consumers before disclosing content information, unless they are prohibited to do so due to a clear indication of illegal conduct in connection with the use of Amazon products and services.
Amazon has developed a security assurance program, built using the best practices for international privacy and data protection to ensure that consumers can safely operate within the AWS environment. These security measures are also rigorously tested and independently validated by a variety of third-party independent assessments.
As an AWS Partner, Swipe iX is able to build scalable products and develop innovative solutions in a secure environment, regardless of product size. Security is always one of our main priorities, and by leveraging our AWS partnership, our clients benefit from the rich and sophisticated AWS architecture, developed to adhere to all data safety requirements. If you’re interested in exploring the various cloud based solutions Swipe iX offers, get in touch! We’re more than happy to put all safety concerns to bed and help your company adapt to the digital decade.
COO