Securing Your Data. And Your Confidence.

The fact is, we live in a connected world. This is the age of the Internet of Things (IoT), in which increasingly more consumers and businesses rely on connected devices and services. From online shopping and banking to common cloud-based business applications like Microsoft Office to social media and gaming consoles, connected technology has permeatedevery corner of our personal and professional lives.

With all this connectivity, comes risks. We’ve seen security breaches impact major companies such as Yahoo, Equifax and T-Mobile. Our industry has also been impacted, most recently with the security breach experienced by a vehicle recovery device and monitoring provider: SVR Tracking.

If you haven’t heard about it, here’s a brief summary of what happened. As a result of a misconfiguration of one of its databases, SVR Tracking exposed sensitive customer data including login names, passwords, email addresses, vehicle locations and even the location of tracking units within vehicles.

The company’s use of outdated encryption data compounded the problem, making it easier for hackers to access this sensitive data. All in all, some 500,000 online records may have been leaked.

As connected technology continues to play a central role in our everyday lives as well as in the way we do business, ensuring security and privacy are more important than ever. At Advantage, we’ve made it a central focus. Today, Advantage serves nearly 500 automotive lenders with over 200,000+ connections across the country. Here are some of the steps we take to ensure our customers’ data remains secure, private and safe:

• The right experts – Our team includes seasoned IoT experts who work around the clock, day in and day out, to protect our customers’ data. As automotive telematics pioneers, we bring decades of experience in building secure solutions our customers can use with confidence.
• Data can be vulnerable if security is not continually updated and encrypted in real time.Many big-name enterprises in fact are installing intricate and complex servers to do analytics, caching and other heavy tasks on the front end of web servers without securing the back end of network security. This leads to security breaches. To address this, we only receive and transmit data via ultra-secure connections and we also leverage data encryption as a bastion for security incident response. Our applications are password protected and are secured using “https” (hypertext transfer protocol) that encrypts web traffic.
• Our servers are run over a private as opposed to a public cloud to ensure maximum security. Access to our private cloud is tightly guarded; we monitor and maintain public-facing Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) web servers 24/7/365. What’s more, we’re constantly scanning our servers to detect any signs of intrusion.
• Our protocol follows the highest industry security standards; conducting regular internal audits of our security processes; and constantly patching all servers with the latest security updates.

Your Role in Securing Your Data

At Advantage GPS, we’re taking every action on our part to ensure the security and privacy of our customers’ data. We encourage our customers to take a proactive role in protecting their own information as well. Here are a few tips for doing just that:

1. Choose a GPS provider that follows proper protocol to secure your data with:
   • A cloud-based VPN setup vs. a closet full of vulnerable servers
   • Data encrypted and password-protected system access
   • Daily security patches and updates
   • Regular internal security audits
   • Continual intrusion detection scanning
2. Always use passwords—the first line of defense in protecting your personal data. When setting up your passwords, follow these basic guidelines:
   • Use eight or more characters if possible
   • Combine letters, numbers and other symbols to avoid easy-to-guess patterns
   • Don’t share your password
   • Limit and lock down access to passwords
3. When an employee leaves your company, be sure to remove him or her from your system and eliminate his or her ability to access your data.

If you have any questions about our security policies and protocols, and how we’re protecting your data, don’t hesitate to contact us.

Advantage GPS is committed to helping you sell and finance more vehicles with minimal risk and greater confidence. That confidence includes knowing that your data is protected, secure and kept private at all times. That’s the true advantage of partnering with us.

– Bill Cheney, Chief Technology Officer