Security, privacy, and backups in Swivle

In this article we provide detailed information about our security, your privacy, and how we take care of backing up your content that is stored in Swivle.

Our infrastructure

Swivle is built on the Amazon AWS infrastructure. Cloud security at AWS is the highest priority. This means we can benefit from a data center and network architecture that is built to meet the requirements of the most security-sensitive organizations.

Your data is stored on Amazon S3. We use the following regions for the storing of your data:

• Ireland
• United States
• United Kingdom
• Singapore
• Sydney

The region used is determined based on the location when you signed up for Swivle.

Our backups

Amazon makes sure all your files are backed up safely. They do this by redundantly storing your files on multiple devices across multiple facilities in your region.

A durability rate of 99.999999999% is guaranteed. In short this means that if you store 10,000 objects with Amazon S3, you can on average expect to incur a loss of a single object once every 10,000,000 years.

Swivle takes care of the backup of all the other relevant data from your Swivle environment. We make hourly backups of your configuration and all the information about your files (metadata, location, folder structure, and so on). These hourly backups are stored on S3 to make them redundantly available.

Security

Any and all data sent to Swivle services is encrypted using the TLS standard before leaving your device. This is the same standard used to encrypt your Web browser connections to secure (HTTPS) web sites.

Files are only publicly viewable when they are accessed through a Public Portal or a Shared Link.

Privacy

Your privacy is something we value highly, and we do our utmost to safeguard this.

You remain the sole owner of your content.

Unlike some cloud storage providers, we do not scan or analyze your content for marketing purposes. Also unlike most SaaS applications, we do not have the option to log in to your Swivle environment to view your content and settings.

In case of an emergency, we have a limited number of employees who must be able to access your data for the reasons stated in our privacy policy. But that is the rare exception, not the rule. We have strict policies that prevent employee access except in these rare circumstances.

We do use external parties for the analysis of the usage of our applications. In these tools, we do not have access to your files, which means that information like file names, thumbnails, previews, and metadata is obscured.

The human factor

The security of any technology is always dependent on the weakest link in the whole chain. This is especially true for modern cloud services. No matter which protocols are in place, the breach will most likely happen at the weakest link: the human factor.

Obviously we take full ownership of our security, and we do not want to divert the responsibility, but it is important to be aware of this and spread this awareness in your organization.

The statistics vary somewhat (from 60 percent up to 90 percent), but all research points out that data breaches are mostly initiated by human error. Internally we have strict procedures and restrictions to prevent these situations from happening.

As a Swivle user, we implore you to pay attention to the following aspects:

• Choose a lengthy and secure password, and change it periodically.

• Be aware of which files you make public using a Portal or Shared Link in Swivle. Although the files are only accessible with the direct link, this link might still fall into the wrong hands.

• Prevent scamming and phishing: when accessing Swivle, always double-check the domain and only trust traffic on swivle.com and swivle.cloud. All our traffic is encrypted with SSL, so verify the certificate in your browser.

Contact us

If you have any further questions regarding our security or privacy, please reach out to us using the chat or by sending an e-mail to team@swivle.com. We will be happy to further elaborate on these topics.