Rentec Direct values security and wants to ensure our clients that we take every possible measure to protect their information and stored data within the software. We understand that our clients handle highly sensitive information about their owners, tenants and properties for their property management business. Rentec Direct provides secure online storage of important documents and secure accounting and payment processing solutions for property managers and landlords. To make certain that your data is always protected, Rentec Direct constantly reviews our security practices and subscribes to security lists to stay apprised of any and all possible vulnerabilities and security threats in our industry.
Compared to desktop based software solutions, Rentec Direct’s secure servers are much more reliable at protecting your private data. Statistically, your data is far safer being house within our online rental software than it would be on any workstation. Applications that run your workstation are much more susceptible to data loss and intrusion by hackers. There are many reasons for this:
- Our servers are routinely and randomly scanned by a third party security vendor to ensure they are safe from both hackers and viruses
- Our servers are frequently backed up. On top of the many layers of redundancy we incorporate to ensure 100% uptime, we also backup frequently both on-site as well as off-site to ensure maximum reliability in the event of a catastrophic failure.
- We use high-reliability enterprise grade hardware and software. Enterprise grade hardware and software provide a higher level of reliability than typical workstation class hardware. This keeps our system online and running error free. We also employ technologies such as RAID (hard drive mirroring), replication, load balancing, and other high tech methods to ensure 100% uptime.
In contrast, when you run an application on your workstation you run the following risks. You DO NOT have the following risks when using Rentec Direct:
- Malicious software such as viruses and other malware are written for workstations. Thousands of computers every minute are infected with viruses without their owners ever knowing about it causing all their local data to be accessible to a nefarious 3rd party.
- Workstation backups are often incomplete, or do not exist at all. A small user error, or a hardware failure can cause a complete loss of data if tit is not backed up elsewhere. Hard drives crash all the time taking all their owner’s precious data with them.
- Workstation class hardware is inferior to enterprise grade hardware. PCs and Macs die all the time causing loss of data and interruption of work. Rentec is online, therefore if your PC ever crashes, your back online and working with your data as quickly as you can scoot over to a different PC.
Using Rentec Direct’s secure, cloud-based software, helps users feel comfortable about the privacy, protection and redundancy of their business’s important data. To find a more technical explanation of our security features, visit our System Security article in the Knowledge Base.
While most of our security updates take place internally without clients noticing, one recent update to the software’s security features included Two-Factor Authentication, which asks users to enter an additional verification code when accessing the system from an unknown location.
Learn more about how Rentec Direct’s security engineers stayed ahead of security threats in 2014 and kept our client’s data safe:
- Rentec Users Can Rest Assured Your Data is Safe from the Poodle Vulnerability
- Your Rentec Direct Data is Safe from the Heartbleed Vulnerability
- What is the Shellshock Bash bug and is my data safe?
Rentec takes the utmost care in ensuring that data is safe and well protected against attacks such as these.
It’s so great to hear that Rentec takes security seriously. I recommend users also use a password manager such as KeePass. If using Windows, the free Microsoft EMET program and the free SpyShelter program would further keep malware from stealing your information. Great article!
Hi Glenn, you are right, password protection is a very important part of the security puzzle! Thank you for the suggestions about useful password managers. Our team has also put together some tips for anyone taking the extra steps to protect their information with these best practices for secure passwords. Thanks again for your insight.