Security & Safety
Announcing secrets.xmission.com – A Self Destructing Encrypted Notes Service
Today, XMission launched https://secrets.xmission.com, our new free, publicly available service to fight off Big Brother, snooping individuals, hackers, and adversaries. Background Off and on for a few years, I had been toying with the idea that I wanted the general public to have access to 100% transparent encryption, repudiation, and deniable plausibility. I am a […]
Disaster Recovery Finally Affordable for SMBs
Any company that relies on computers to store and process data should understand the importance of backups. Unfortunately, many small and medium-sized businesses feel overwhelmed at the prospect and don’t know how to proceed. Sound familiar? Thanks to free and easy to use software, sensible off-site backups for disaster recovery can now be accomplished cheaply […]
Preventing Participation in Distributed Denial of Service
Over the past week, XMission has seen a sharp spike in Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks. These attacks utilize spoofing of requests over UDP services to servers that would otherwise believe they are coming from a trusted source. Essentially these unwitting servers act as amplifiers, taking in a few bytes of a command and […]
4 ways your business benefits from XMission’s privacy policy
In the past few weeks there has been a lot of media attention given to XMission’s stance on customer privacy (links below). Honestly, it feels great to finally be recognized for one of our core values. What isn’t being talked about is why our privacy policy matters to businesses. Earlier today, I asked our long-time […]
5 things I learned at HostingCon 2013
A couple of weeks ago, I attended HostingCon with another XMission long-time team member, Grant Sperry. We had an incredible experience and I wanted to share a few of the lessons we learned: * Love what you do. Staying relevant and connected with your customer base means that providers need to focus on the components […]
Offsite Backups: a key business continuity strategy
Off-site backups are like a daily exercise regimen. They’re both obviously a very good idea but in the abstract seem daunting to implement. Certainly an off-site backup solution will cost a lot, both up front and ongoing, right? Actually, it might not cost as much as you might expect. If your business has a somewhat […]
What is PCI Compliance and why should you care?
What is the PCI DSS? The Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) was developed by the PCI Security Standards Council many years ago to provide “an actionable framework for developing a robust account data security process – including preventing, detecting and reacting to security incidents.” While the credit card industry outlines policies and […]
XMission Completes SSAE 16 Type 2 Audit
As VP of Operations, I oversaw XMission’s recent SSAE 16, type 2 audit certification. Since this was our first such audit, we decided to limit the scope to the two products where customers would benefit the most: colocation and our Stackable cloud hosting product. In recent years, XMission has greatly expanded our focus on business […]
An ISP That Believes in the Constitution
Recent actions by American technology companies have been disappointing to watch. For 17 years of XMission’s operation, we have consistently fought for the freedom and privacy of our customers. On many occasions, our customers have been attacked by individuals or groups who disagreed with what they were saying or publishing. Threats of legal action, unfounded […]
Adobe offers advice on avoiding new Reader attack
by Robert McMillan, IDG News Service One day after warning of a new attack on its Reader and Acrobat software, Adobe issued a security advisory Tuesday offering users some advice on how to mitigate the problem.