What happens to my information after I give it to Water Street Associates?
How is my information protected?
It's important to know that your personal financial data is secure. Water Street Associates has put an extensive data protection system into place to ensure your information remains under your control.
Your data is protected against:
Laptop theft.
All of our computers have "Full-Disk Encryption", preventing a thief from gaining instant access to your information. This form of encryption also protects against the removal of the laptop's hard drive for use in another computer. For the more technically inclined: The hard drive is encrypted using the AES cipher, with a 256-bit key length.
Network Snooping.
For those of you who have the ability to work from home, you may have heard the term "Virtual Private Network" or VPN used in conjunction with your remote access. We have a similar setup. When we connect to our server to review your documents, there are a variety of encryption ciphers protecting your data as it travels through the Internet. There are also checks performed on both ends to ensure data integrity.
Server Theft.
All documents stored on Water Street servers are encrypted at the file level and can only be accessed by authorized associates. Of course it's unlikely, but we don't take any risks when it comes to security.
Viruses and Malware.
Our computers have up to date protection against viruses and "malware" - software that can monitor and potentially snoop in and gather your data as we work on it.
Accidents.
Computers aren't perfect and we're human. So, we've taken an extra step. Our data is backed up to an off-site secure location on a daily basis, just in case.