Press Release (U.K.)

Asigra Delivers Remote Backup to Iceland's Government Ministry of Statistics
SecurStore Uses Asigra’s Software to Protect Statistics Iceland’s Data

London 13 February 2006: Asigra today announced that SecurStore, a leading Icelandic storage services provider, is providing Statistics Iceland, the national statistical institute of Iceland, with Asigra’s agentless distributed backup and recovery software, Televaulting. Statistics Iceland uses SecurStore’s managed backup and recovery service that deploys Asigra’s Televaulting software, to backup hundreds of gigabytes of sensitive data from Statistics Iceland’s Reykjavik office to a secure offsite location every night.

Statistics Iceland is a government ministry that holds sensitive data of all Icelandic citizens and official statistics, in accordance with government requirements. The minister of Statistics Iceland is the Prime Minister of Iceland, Mr. Halldór Ásgrímsson. Data security is of paramount importance to Statistics Iceland as they are subject to government legislation statutes and legislation on official statistics and civil registration on ensuring this sensitive official and civil data is safe. Statistics Iceland has three divisions; personal and social statistics, business statistics and national accounts, and the National Population Registry.

At Statistics Iceland the ever increasing amount of data, that needs to be backed up, was beginning to strain the previous tape-based backup system. Faced with a hefty investment in renewing the backup system as well as adding a remote (offsite) disk storage they began to look for alternatives. Meeting all the requirements Asigra’s SecurStore was an obvious choice.

Davíd Davídsson, IT manager of Statistics Iceland, said, “Data security and fast recovery of our data is an extremely important issue for us. The service from SecurStore is more secure than any I have ever seen, and gives absolute guarantee that our very sensitive data is safe even when it is in the process of being backed up and retrieved. Because of Asigra’s bare metal restore, I know that if our systems go down I can quickly restore the backed up data and be back in business within a few hours without having lost data. The pay-as-you-use model makes the service very cost-effective, and we have not incurred the substantial investment we had feared when initially looking to change our backup processes. We plan to move the majority of our data into this service.”

“Statistics Iceland knew what it wanted from a new backup and recovery service but was worried about the high price it might have to pay for it ,” said Alexander Eiríksson, president of SecurStore. “Because of Asigra’s capacity-based pricing and the fact that you don’t have to pay for each computer connected to the server, we are delivering a secure, fast, and reliable service at a cost-effective rate. Statistics Iceland is now backing up all its critical data with us, including over 70 SQL databases and its file system. With Asigra’s Televaulting functionality behind SecurStore Remote Backup Service, Statistics Iceland knows that all of its data is safely stored off site and is restorable within minutes.”

Eran Farajun, executive vice-president of Asigra, commented, “The very nature of Statistics Iceland’s operations necessitates a secure and reliable backup and recovery system, and their choice demonstrates the strength of SecurStore’s service and the reliability of our software. With Asigra’s software, SecurStore can factor for an incremental rise in data growth without slowing down the backup window times or taking up employee time.”

At the Reykjavik headquarters, a single Asigra Televaulting DS-Client discovers all servers, desktops and laptops connected to the local network, and automates the backup of all local data assets. Agents are not installed on machines being backed up. Before the backup data set is transmitted to SecurStore’s data centre, Asigra Televaulting software analyses the data, finds new and changed file blocks, eliminates duplicate files and further compresses the residue bytes to ensure the backup set is as compact as possible. The software then encrypts the data before sending it over an IP- WAN connection to a centralised Asigra Televaulting DS-System server, located in SecurStore’s data centre, which consolidates the backup data from all distributed sites. Data is encrypted “in-flight” and “at-rest”. That DS-System server is then protected just like any other server within the data centre as part of the organisation’s ongoing data protection policies. As an additional level of data protection, SecurStore has configured the DS-System server to replicate the vault to a second secure back up site.

Asigra Televaulting for Service Providers supports a broad range of platforms, including Windows, Linux, Unix, Novell, AS/400 and Macintosh, and protects Oracle, SQL Server, VMware and Exchange Server data. Back-end DS-System software runs on Solaris, Linux, MACINTOSH and Windows.

About Statistics Iceland
Statistics Iceland was founded in 1914 and is headquartered in Iceland. Statistics Iceland is the national statistical institute of Iceland. The operation of Statistics Iceland is based on the legislation on Statistics Iceland and other acts on official statistics, the Act and statutes on the Central Government Administration, the legislation on civil registration and the National Register of Population and other legislation. It is also based on the United Nations Fundamental Principles of Official Statistics. Statistics Iceland has laid down its own Rules of Procedure for Treating Confidential Data, and fully observes the relevant provisions of the Act on the Protection of Privacy as regards the processing of personal data. Statistics Iceland is divided into three statistical divisions – personal and social statistics, business statistics and national accounts, as well as the National Population Registry. More information can be found at www.statice.is/?PageID=439

About SecurStore
SecurStore was established in 1991 and is located 30 miles outside of Reykjavik. SecurStore is Iceland’s foremost storage services provider, offering extensive knowledge and expertise of IT software development and computer and IT solutions. SecurStore currently retails its services using a per gigabyte stored licensing model. It is suitable for small, mid-size and enterprise-wide, multiple-platform LAN computing environments that want to safeguard their critical business data in a secure, off-site and offshore location. The company is also a Microsoft Certified Partner. More information about the company and SecurStore backup/restore solution can be found at www.securstore.com.

About Asigra
Asigra is the award-winning leader in remote office/branch office online backup/recovery with more than three petabytes of data under protection. Since 1986, the company’s agentless Televaulting solution has centralised data management and eliminated the pricing and performance problems created by agent-based tape backup software in multi-site enterprises. Televaulting addresses government and international regulatory compliance demands by backing up remote/branch office data to the data centre. Data is encrypted both “in-flight” over the WAN and “at rest.” Televaulting is offered by leading resellers and service providers worldwide including HP, InTechnology and Zycko to deliver highly secure data protection. Privately held Asigra is headquartered in Toronto, Canada with partner offices located worldwide. For more information, visit the company's website at www.asigra.com.