Security | Document Management and Scanning Blog

Archive for the ‘Security’ Category

Wait a Minute, What is a PDF?

Thursday, March 4th, 2010

OfficeDrop turns all of your paper into text-searchable PDFs, but those new to our services may be wondering “what is a PDF?”

A PDF (Portable Document Format) is, essentially, a standardized way to represent two dimensional digital images. These images may be graphics, text documents, or a combination of the two. The PDF was created by Adobe Systems in 1993 and since them has become a standard in digital document representation. In 2008 it was published by the International Organization for Standardization as an open standard, meaning that it is now universalized and available to the public royalty-free.

The format is especially versatile because it not exclusive to any software, hardware, or operating systems - making it very easy to share. In addition, the PDF is completely extensible, which means it can be adapted to guarantee compatibility with future innovations. A PDF is typically viewed as a digital representation of a piece of paper as you would expect to see on a word processor.

Additional features of the PDF include security options like password protection, text-searchability, and interactive properties such as annotations and other edits.

Due to its heightened accessibility, security, and feature list, the PDF is the format we have chosen for your documents. We hope you now have a better appreciation of how you are viewing your documents, and why this is our favorite format here at OfficeDrop.

Posted in Customer Satisfaction, Product Features, Security | No Comments »

Pixily Moves to Cambridge

Monday, February 8th, 2010

We are pleased to announce that the OfficeDrop office has moved from our Waltham headquarters to an office in Cambridge. The new space will provide us with a lot more room to grow, as well as more space to store and process your documents. We are also excited to be closer to Boston, and closer to talented folks who can aid us with our growth and development.

The security and privacy of your documents is always foremost in our thoughts, and we assure you that our location change will in no way compromise the security of your documents during transfer or processing. In fact, the new office will allow for added security as well as space.

We will soon have new envelopes for our subscription customers with the new address. Until then, we have made arrangements with our postal facility distribution center to have all of your envelopes forwarded to the new location. (In fact, this is already happening.) As you can imagine, there is a pretty meaningful volume of our green scanvelopes through our local postal facility. We know the people there well and they are helping us make this a smooth transition. For our box customers, we have sent new PDF labels to those of you who will be impacted by our transition. We are also maintaining both the new location and the old location for a period of time, ensuring that we will get packages and scanvelopes regardless of where they are sent.

As for our service, customers will receive the same OfficeDrop service they currently enjoy, without having to change anything about how they submit or view their documents. Submission and processing will work the same way, it will just happen in a roomy new office!

We thank you for using OfficeDrop and look forward to serving you from our new Cambridge office.

For your records, our new address is:

OfficeDrop
Suite One
180 Fawcett Street
Cambridge, MA 02138-1112

As always, you can call our customer service number toll free at 888-674-6493 if you have any questions.

Posted in Customer Satisfaction, Events, Security | No Comments »

Tips to Improve your Password Strength

Wednesday, January 27th, 2010

OfficeDrop provides you with a long list of security features, but when it comes to your online account, your information can only be as secure as your account password. Hackers can take advantage of short or simple passwords, leaving many at risk. Essentially “12345″ is not going to cut it. We want your password strength to be high, so that you won’t give any hackers the satisfaction.

Fortunately there are several ways to make sure your password is bombproof. Imperva has provided a complete guide to password strengths and pitfalls here. We thought this article was very informative, and have outlined their main points to make sure your password is un-hackable, and that your documents stay secure.

4 Tips For Password Strength

1. Your password should be at least 8 characters long.

2. Your Password should contain a mix of numbers, upper case letters, lower case letter, and special characters (!@#$%).

3. Your password should not be a name, part of your email address, or any single word in the dictionary. This will protect you from password guessing and “dictionary attacks.”

4. It is recommended that your password is a shortened character representation of a sentence. For example, the phrase “safe from attack” could become the password “s8feFRM@ack.”

Posted in Document Management, Security | 1 Comment »

Pixily Thanks USPS

Monday, January 4th, 2010

We had a great year here at OfficeDrop, and would like to recognize the fact that much of what we do would be impossible without the hard work of the United States Postal Service. Our mail-in document scanning service makes it easier than ever to scan your paper documents to digital PDFs and we couldn’t have done it without the good people at USPS.

Thank you USPS!

Each day we see envelopes and boxes carried into our office without fail. For this we would like to thank the hard-working people at USPS. Because of USPS we now have customers in almost every state of the union (including Alaska and Hawaii!) We wouldn’t be able to provide our service at the price we offer without our reliable postal service. Even as the weather turns for the worst, the US Postal Service helps make sure our customers’ documents are delivered to us unharmed and on time.

After all,

Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift and safe delivery of your paper documents for scanning with OfficeDrop.

Posted in Customer Satisfaction, Security | No Comments »

Document Scanning Security: You Can Rest Assured With Pixily

Monday, November 30th, 2009

For those interested in document scanning, security is one of the greatest concerns. After all, document scanning isn’t effective unless you can be sure your documents are safe. That’s why security is paramount at OfficeDrop, and when you sign up you can rest assured that every precaution has been taken to keep your information secure on all fronts.

Check out some of the ways OfficeDrop keeps your documents safe:

Transit Security

Your paper documents are mailed to us in waterproof, tamper-revealing envelopes or boxes. After UPS pick up and drop off, boxes and envelopes are prepaid and sent through first class USPS mail.

Scanning Office

Once delivered, your documents are scanned, and tracked by our personnel who have each met the requirements of our extensive background check. In addition, we hold a strict policy that there are no recording devices permitted in the scanning center at any time. Our storage facility and our processing facility are secure facilities only accessible by our authorized personnel.

Online Account

Our online accounts, with user configurable access, are password protected with 256-bit SSL encryption of documents and data during transmission and storage. To protect from viruses, accounts undergo daily audits by McAfee. Our security is also certified by TRUSTe, the leading privacy seal certification organization.

Data Center

Your digital data is stored in large-scale data centers trusted by Amazon, and protected by military grade perimeter control beams, intrusion detection systems, and 24×7 on-site security. In addition, documents are stored in two physical locations across the US to protect them from natural and other disasters.

System Security

Our system works with an extensively tested operating system along with strict firewall protection per server.

*For a more extensive description of OfficeDrop’s security systems, visit OfficeDrop.com/security or contact us directly.

Posted in Document Management, Security | No Comments »