How Data is Kept Safe and Secure

HOW OUR DATA IS KEPT SAFE AND SECURE:

One of the reasons Utsalady Heights Owners Association decided to partner with HOA-Express, is because security is a top concern. They've employed techniques that meet or exceed industry standards, including a number of techniques used for bank-level security. We'll summarize some of them below, by category.

SSL

HOA-Express encrypts all traffic to our website with SSL encryption, an important measure that prevents some forms of stolen data. SSL encryption is an important layer of security. To help keep residents safe, they will automatically redirect all website visitors to our SSL encrypted community website pages. You can verify that the website is encrypted with SSL by checking if the URL contains "https://" instead of "http://" (note the 's').

What exactly is SSL good for anyway? It encrypts all communications between the user and HOA-Express servers. This primarily protects users against having private information stolen via what's known as a "man-in-the-middle" attack. These types of attacks can occur at public WiFi hotspots, among other situations. But not to worry, our data and our residents are protected from this type of attack on our website. SSL can also prevent against other attacks and helps with other security concerns, but those start to get fairly technical.

DATA ENCRYPTION

Behind the scenes, in the HOA-Express data storage systems, they encrypt important personal data. This means that if it's ever intercepted or falls into the wrong hands, it will be useless without the means to decrypt it.

DATA HASHING

Data hashing is like encryption, except it is one-way. HOA-Express uses this primarily for passwords and certain API keys. That means that if hashed data falls into the wrong hands, it's impossible to convert back into its original form.

LOGIN TECHNIQUES

The HOA-Express authentication system uses a variety of account protection techniques, including (but not limited to) account locking mechanisms, aggressive API key expiration, multiple brute-force countermeasures, and stolen account detection. These details are relatively technical, but you can be confident HOA-Express does everything possible on their end to keep your account safe.

CONTENT RESTRICTION SETTINGS

An important form of data security is controlling who can see content, and who cannot. The HOA-Express Admin Interface gives administrators the ability to set detailed content restrictions. Limit pages and files to just residents, just homeowners, just board members, just a custom group of residents, just one or two residents, not one or two residents... you can see where this is going—the options are limitless. On top of that, they've built in considerable security measures to make sure that the chosen restrictions are enforced.

PRIVACY PREFERENCES

Residents can choose their own privacy preferences, allowing them to control what information other residents see on the website. For instance, they can hide information from the community directory if preferred. They can also choose what contact information is displayed if they're a board or committee member, and what information remains private. Or, if they want, they can write an entire profile of themselves and include their social media contact information and a narrative about themselves. It's entirely up to the resident how much or how little of information they would like to share.

BACKING UP DATA

This security measure doesn't have to do with protecting you from stolen data; rather, it protects our community from lost data. HOA-Express backs up all data (including residents, pages, files, and much, much more) on a regular basis throughout the day. All of our website content is backed up regularly in multiple ways across multiple data centers to ensure our data isn't permanently lost in the event of technological failure. They back up any files you upload, the text and content you write, visitor tracking analytics, and more on an hourly or daily basis (depending on the type of content). We can be confident our data is safe with HOA-Express.