In the third article from our series on the Acumatica Difference, we covered Acumatica’s robust, unique platform with its open APIs and low-code/no-code framework.

The level of openness in an enterprise resource planning (ERP) platform is critical to business success in the digital economy. It’s how businesses integrate with essential third-party applications, develop flexible, agile processes that can shift with the changing market, and build operations that empower an increasingly mobile and remote workforce.

A modern ERP system should never lock your business into one way of doing things.

However, such a system should be “locked” in a different way. That is, it should be secure and reliable.

Core to Acumatica’s commitment to its customers, and annunciated in the Acumatica Customer Bill of Rights, is the foundational belief that every business has “the right to a complete security model that covers your application access, data, reports, and devices.” Here’s how we put that belief into action through two levels of security: application level and infrastructure level.

Application-level Security

The ERP application itself is the home base of a business’s operations. It’s where all your data—including sensitive customer, employee, and competitive information—is collected, processed, analyzed, and stored. And, because of that, it can be a point of attack for anyone wanting to breach your company’s security.

Acumatica takes its responsibility to secure your home base extremely seriously.

When a business chooses an Acumatica SaaS (software as a service) deployment, the software is hosted by Acumatica, and we are responsible for maintaining, updating, and securing it—controlling access to the physical hardware, protecting it against environmental hazards, and preventing cyberattacks. This extensive, enterprise-grade protection is crafted to give you lasting peace of mind.

But beyond this, Acumatica also offers many other important security measures, including:

• Providing extensive password protection measures. This includes password complexity requirements and prompts to update passwords over time. Acumatica also provides robust multifactor authentication capabilities including compatibility with best-in-class authentication solution.
• Restricting logins to certain IP addresses, which prevents access to the system from unverified locations and unprotected networks.
• Enforcing robust security measures by implementing role-based access. Users are assigned unique security credentials and certain rights tailored to their role within organization This ensures that employees can only access the data and screens necessary for their job functions, as defined by their employer, providing an additional layer of security and compliance.
• Supporting and complying with critical regulatory requirements, like the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).
• Acumatica SaaS is SOC compliant and undergoes an annual audit, to ensure the protection of sensitive data and instill confidence in our customers regarding their data security practices.
• 24×7 monitoring by enterprise level security tools and software to prevent, detect and address any security threats.
• And much more.

Acumatica is committed to making sure our ERP software—as the data hub for your entire business—is secure in every way. But our commitment doesn’t end with the software itself. It also extends to the infrastructure on which the software is built.

Infrastructure-level Security

Acumatica Cloud ERP is built on the world’s most secure infrastructure for small and medium-sized businesses: Amazon Web Services (AWS).

AWS is constantly creating new ways to ensure data security in a world where cybercriminals are always developing aggressive ways to steal it. AWS is at the forefront of innovation, and Acumatica is grounded in its infrastructural safeguards.

In its list of data protection and privacy commitments, AWS promises to:

• Give software providers using its infrastructure the power to implement customized privacy controls, including advanced access, encryption, and logging features.
• Provide state-of-the-art data encryption management and implement reliable, extensible methods for governing how data is collected, used, accessed, stored, and deleted.
• Support workloads in compliance with GDPR, PCI, and HIPAA
• And, again, much more.

AWS has also “achieved numerous internationally-recognized certifications and accreditations, demonstrating compliance with rigorous international standards, such as ISO 27017 for cloud security, ISO 27701 for privacy information management, and ISO 27018 for cloud privacy.”

This first-class infrastructural security is key to keeping your data safe, but safe data is valueless if you can’t access it because your ERP system is offline.

Uptime, All the Time

Like our 24/7/365 security monitoring, the Acumatica system itself is always up, running, and ready for you to seize the business day. Whether that day starts at midnight or 4:00 PM, the system, with its 99.9% uptime, is there, and available, to put all your data at your fingertips.

Even in the event of disasters that could physically damage hardware and take the system offline, there is an additional layer of protection, Acumatica backs up all data to separate geographic zones. If a disaster were to occur and shut down the datacenter hosting your software, Acumatica would quickly resume your service from an alternate datacenter.

Every eventuality is planned for to keep our systems running at the speed of your business.

What Do Other Customers Have to Say?

Many companies are already benefiting from Acumatica’s advanced security and guaranteed uptime. Here are a couple examples:

Scott Stilson, Manager of Information Systems at DiamondBack Truck Covers—which makes and sells hard-shell pickup truck bed covers direct to customers:

“It was someone’s entire job to babysit [sales order imports into our jobsite management system, Shoptech E2, because the imports often crashed]. It was harrowing, and we’d lose a whole day’s worth of accounting because it would often lead to corruption in QuickBooks. It was just terrible and went on for almost a year. [Now,] as soon as everything lands in Acumatica, the accounts receivable specialist has everything she needs. The matching is all done for her.” – Scott Stilson

Nathanial Fairweather, Managing Director at Triode—a New Zealand-based electronics manufacturer:

“Without the Acumatica suite, we would certainly not have gotten ISO-certified. We framed our entire quality management framework around Acumatica, from document management to update processes. [And when our sprinkler system caused] massive flooding [in our offices], the one fortunate thing was that, throughout the chaos, I didn’t have to worry about our ERP system, our integrity of the data, or the security of it because it was all off-site.”

Conclusion

Acumatica’s commitment to the security and availability of your software is central to everything we do as a company. To learn more about how that commitment can benefit your business, contact our experts. And stay tuned for the next article in this series, which will be coming soon!