Security

System Security
The developers of PortalsXpress have anticipated your security concerns. We have built a system using trusted, reliable security technology to safeguard your information and the information stored on the private client site. We employ a "Distributed Security Network" to ensure protection throughout the PortalsXpress system. Distributed security means that we do not rely on one security measure, but instead we use many means of defense, including encryption, automatic sign-off, and state of the art firewalls to protect your information.

Privacy
Communications privacy between you, your clients and our servers are ensured using cryptography. Cryptography scrambles information exchanged between your computer and our PortalsXpress servers. The secured session is established using a protocol called Secured Socket Layer (SSL) Encryption. Using SSL requires the exchange of certificates that verify each side is really who they say they are. Once the certificates are exchanged, your computer will use strong encryption to encode the information sent between your computer and the PortalsXpress servers. The SSL protocol ensures privacy as well as ensuring that no other computer can "impersonate" your computer, or any information sent.

To tell if your computer's web browser is in a secure mode, look for the secured lock symbol at the bottom of your browser window.

Authorization
It is important to verify that only authorized clients are able to log into your PortalsXpress account. This is achieved with a "user name/password" combination to authenticate the client. When the user name and password is submitted, it is compared with the user name/password combination we have stored in our secured data center.

You play an important role in preventing unauthorized users from logging into the system. Never use or allow other users to set passwords that are easy to guess. Examples of bad passwords include first names, birth dates, pet names, addresses, phone numbers, and social security numbers. Never reveal your password to another person. Passwords should also be changed periodically to ensure security.

Time out
When viewing secure private websites, your web browser will "timeout" after a specified period of inactivity. This prevents a curious person from viewing the private site while you or your clients are away from the computer without logging out. It is our recommendation that you always sign off (log out) when you are done with a private client site.

Encryption
The codes used in the encryption keys are analogous to combination locks. The strength of encryption is based on the number of different possible combinations a lock may have. As the number of possible combinations grow, it becomes more difficult for someone to guess the combination to decrypt information. For this reason, the PortalsXpress servers use 128-bit encryption which provides 2128 possible combinations.