HOW YOUR DATA
IS SECURED

• Individual Password Protection

  Each user maintains an individual account and password and therefore a unique encryption key. The password is encrypted before it is stored in our database. At no point is an administrator able to retrieve your password, nor does an administrator have the ability to set a password to a known value.

   

  When you activate your account, you are required to choose a password and set up a security question. If you forget your password, or repeatedly try to log in with an incorrect password, the system will lock you out after a few attempts. You may then reset your password by correctly answering your security question.

   

  If you incorrectly answer your security question, you are again locked out after a few attempts. In the unlikely event that you forget your password and the answer to your security question, you must contact Backup Barracks directly for manual identity verification.

• End-to-End Verification

  The integrity of all data files are verified against a known CRC signature. Files are re-verified each time they are written to disk. If any file fails verification, it is retransmitted from the PC or recovered from the replica server. This ensures that the data stored on our servers is the same data that was stored on your PC.

• Secure Protocol

  The Backup Barracks client communicates with our servers over a proprietary protocol that was designed specifically for Internet backup. Other Internet backup products that use popular web protocols like HTTP, FTP, or WebDav can be vulnerable to hacker and virus attacks. The extreme popularity of these protocols makes them a target. It is extremely unlikely that a hacker is going to invest the time and effort to go after a proprietary protocol. Even if they did, the 448 bit Blowfish Encryption has never been broken.

• Firewalls

  To maximize compatibility with home and corporate firewalls, the protocol used by our Backup Client was designed to look to a firewall just like the SSL protocol used in web browsers. This means that if you are able to surf to our web site, you will be able to connect with our backup software. Specifically, our backup client runs on port 443 and mimics SSL’s handshaking protocol. Almost all firewalls will pass our backup traffic without reconfiguration. We also support the use of proxy servers. Our web browser interface also uses generic HTTP and HTTPS on ports 80 and 443.

• Corporate Remote Access Policy

  Many organizations have a policy to control access to their data from outside of the organization. VPNs and Firewalls are generally used to control this, but become ineffective when the data is stored off-site. The same features that empower a laptop user to backup and restore his or her data while on the road may violate corporate information policy.  Backup Barracks includes the ability to restrict data access to only specific IP addresses. A Corporate Administrator can define the IP address ranges of their firewalls and access points. Once the definitions are in place, users can only access the data from the allowed locations.

• Encryption

  Files are protected using 448 bit Blowfish Encryption. This extremely secure “bank grade” encryption algorithm has never been cracked. Backup Barracks considered many factors when choosing Blowfish as its encryption technology, including peer review, speed and key strength. It is clear that Blowfish will set the standard for years to come, and will continue to be the preferred encryption algorithm for corporations worldwide.

• The Blowfish Algorithm

  Of the hundreds of encryption algorithms available today, Blowfish stands out as the industry leader and has been selected by Backup Barracks as its encryption algorithm.

   

  Blowfish is a symmetric encryption algorithm designed in 1993 by Bruce Schneier as an alternative to existing encryption algorithms such as DES. Unlike DES, however, the Blowfish algorithm has a variable key length, which can be extended from 32 bits to 448 bits, making this a more secure alternative. Blowfish is a 64-bit cipher (i.e. a cryptographic key and algorithm are applied to a block of data rather than single bits).

   

  Blowfish is a fast, free alternative to existing algorithms and has been analyzed considerably through years of peer review.

   

  Finding the plain text of an encrypted message without knowing the key is called “cracking” an algorithm. This brute-force attack consists of trying all possible values of keys until the right one is found.

   

  It is easy to demonstrate that in the case of brute-force attack, the security increases together with the length of the key. If the key is 8 bits long, there are 2 (to the power of 8), or 256 possible combinations. With a key of 40 bits this is increased to 2 (to the power of 40), or one thousand billion combinations. The protection then resides on the time needed for a computer to perform its attack. Based on these premises as well as numerous industry trials, it is common opinion today that 40-bit key algorithms are useless as they can be “cracked” within a few hours by an average personal computer. 64-bit algorithms are safe today but will become threatened as technology evolves. 128-bit and over algorithms are almost unbreakable. In other words, it would take millions of years to try every possible combination of bits in a 128-bit key.

   

  Based on calculations it can be said that a 128-bit encryption is not just three times stronger than a 40-bit encryption—it is 309,485,009,821,345,068,724,781,056 times stronger. Likewise, a 448-bit encryption key is 2.1 x 1096 times stronger than a 128-bit key.

• Speed

  The speed of the Blowfish algorithm is also impressive. The table below illustrates the effective throughput of the algorithm and shows how even large key lengths result in much faster performance than other encryption algorithms.

  Algorithm

  Notes

  Clock Cycles / Round

  Number /
  Round

  # of clock cycles per byte encrypted

  Blowfish

  9

  16

  18

  Free, unpatented

  Khufu/Khafre

  5

  32

  20

  Patented by Xerox

  RCS

  12

  16

  23

  Patented by RSA

  DES

  18

  16

  45

  56-bit key

  IDEA

  50

  8

  50

  Patented by
  Ascom Systec

  Triple – DES

  18

  48

  108

  Very Popular

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