TownNews uses multiple methods to ensure data protection and retention. These methods are BLOX CMS asset revisions, data storage snapshots, and data storage replication. Each method offers its own unique benefits and properties regarding how data is safeguarded and how long data is retained. Although we make every effort to protect and retain the data provided to our platform, customers acknowledge all data uploaded to the platform belongs to the customer; and, the customer holds sole responsibility for ensuring they maintain off platform copies/backups for data protection and retention.
Each time an asset within BLOX CMS is updated in any way a new revision of the asset is created. When viewing the asset within BLOX users can view each past revision including the author or source of the update, the time it was updated, and what changes were made. Users can choose to revert the asset to any previous revision of the asset. There is no age limit on revisions in most cases, instead BLOX tracks the twenty most recent updates to an asset. This allows assets to retain update history for extended periods of time.
All BLOX content rests on large commercial storage systems. These systems are built with many redundancies at both the hardware and software level to ensure that no single points of failure exist. In addition to this redundancy the system takes a snapshot (point in time picture) each day at 12:00AM. Each snapshot contains a frozen read-only copy of the entire filesystem and all of its data at the time it was taken. TownNews keeps thirty days of snapshots in rotation and in the unlikely event a restoration is needed TownNews can simply copy or restore the needed information based on the date and time of the data within the snapshots.
Replication is the process of sending data asynchronously and continuously (copying) to another storage system or location. In the unlikely event of a major disaster or complete facility failure TownNews replicates all data to our other geographically diverse facilities. As an additional safety precaution this replicated data is also snapshotted daily. This ensures that even in a worst case scenario all data is protected and recoverable.
Customers who end service with TownNews will be contacted by a member of our team to arrange download of customer content (archives) prior to the effective date of service termination. Content is typically provided via FTP or HTTP download for up to thirty days past the effective date. After this period TownNews will remove all services and configurations. As a data safety precaution we will continue to hold this data for an additional thirty days before removing the data from our systems.
