Having been around since the 1970s, there are quite a few software escrow solutions on the market today. They all provide slightly different services in their own slightly different ways. Each is priced individually and independently.

When looking for software escrow, it’s important to choose a provider that meets your needs and complexities at a price that suits you, while providing the level of security that you need.

Firstly, what is software escrow?

Software escrow is a service that helps protect all parties involved in a software license from a loss of service. These parties are usually a software vendor or developer and the software user. Standard software escrow involves a neutral third-party escrow agent, such as us here at LEA&S, having a contractual obligation to hold the source code and documentation for the software in question. We can also hold the data stored on the software but this is complex due to GDPR. We usually encourage end-users to take regular data back-ups and keep control of data themselves.

SaaS escrow works in a very similar way but is in use where there are three parties involved in the SaaS service; a software vendor, a software user and a third-party hosting provider. It protects all parties against the many issues that can arise with SaaS being off-premise.

With both standard software escrow and SaaS escrow, if something unexpected was to happen to the software vendor or the third-party hosting provider, the software user would still be able to access and maintain the software. These unexpected instances cover a number of eventualities, including if the software vendor or third-party hosting provider:

• Ceases to trade
• Becomes insolvent
• Enters into receivership or liquidation
• Fails to support the software as per their support and maintenance agreement

Ultimately, software escrow protects against a loss of service. In these cases, we as the escrow agent would release the source code for the software to the software user so that they may continue to use the software, keeping their business going with little to no disruption.

How much does an escrow agreement cost with LEA&S?

At LEA&S, we pride ourselves on offering affordable escrow services. We believe that protecting your business shouldn’t break the bank.

The pricing for our standard escrow agreement is as follows:
Set up fee
£750*
IP owner/licensor – 100%
Licensee – 0%

Annual fee
£560
IP owner/licensor – 0%
Licensee – 100%

Release fee
£100
IP owner/licensor – 0%
Licensee – 100%
*this may be reduced where there are 2 or more licenses

Our pricing for our SaaS Escrow Agreement with AccessAssure is as follows:
Set up fee
£1250
IP owner/licensor – 100%
Licensee – 0%

Annual fee (REU)
£950
IP owner/licensor – 0%
Licensee – 100%

Release fee
£250
IP owner/licensor – 0%
Licensee – 100%

Is software escrow worth it?

In today’s digital and technological world, having a backup plan in case something happens to your software provider is vital. Cybercrime is at an all-time high and the COVID-19 pandemic has left many businesses feeling unsafe and unprepared. Now is the time to think twice about protecting your business-critical data.

Software escrow agreements are a way for businesses to protect their software provision and are part of any good disaster recovery strategy. By investing in software escrow, you are not only protecting your business but also demonstrating your commitment and investment in the future of your business to investors.

Convinced? We hope so. If you have any more questions about software escrow and our pricing structure, simply get in touch. You can either fill out our online enquiry form or call us on 0800 456 1115.

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Cybersecurity may be the kind of thing that many businesses brush under the rug and choose to ignore. It doesn’t bring in money or contribute to the business strategy, so there’s no time in the day to focus on it. That could be a huge mistake though, as cyberattacks can cost a business a lot of money if they are unlucky enough to be targeted.

Despite this, many small businesses still believe that it won’t happen to them. Unfortunately, multiple past studies have shown that at least 43% of cyberattacks are aimed at small businesses – and it’s arguably these businesses that it can affect the worst financially. Small businesses are often targeted because they commonly lack the support needed to protect against these attacks.

The average cost of a cyberattack on a small/micro business is £919, increasing to £3,070 for medium/large businesses. But where do these costs come from? Let’s take a look at some of the financial impacts a cyberattack can have on your business.

Revenue due to downtime

The cost of a cyberattack is not only financial. Your business is likely to need some time out to recover. If part of your IT infrastructure is down as a result, chances are it’s going to affect other parts of your business. This may disrupt your services and deliverables, hindering your business for a period of time.

Costs associated with managing exposed customer data

Data protection breaches and fines for non-compliance have become somewhat of a hot topic over the last few years, with the introduction of GDPR. The fines that come with exposing customer data are pretty substantial and can be an enormous blow to a company’s reputation. Companies have a responsibility to ensure that customer data is stored correctly and well protected. Measures such as multi-factor authentication are a good way to try and combat data breaches.

Loss of customer confidence in your company

Trust is a huge part of a customer relationship, and cyberattacks have the potential to wipe this trust out in the blink of an eye. A cyberattack can result in a loss of customers, a loss of sales and a reduction in your profits. It can have a ripple effect throughout the rest of your business, even affecting the relationship you have with your suppliers, partners, investors and other third parties.

Share price or market value drop

Perhaps you are worried about the impact on the share price of your company. This will almost certainly be affected by a cyberattack. In fact, share prices of breached companies hit a low point approximately 14 market days following a breach. Cyberattacks and data breaches can be a PR nightmare, sinking share and stock prices. This can take a while to build back up.

Business security is always worth your investment – whether that’s ensuring you have all the latest malware, training your team or implementing a range of cybersecurity protocols. You should also add investing in SaaS Escrow to your list. Whilst you can tighten up on your own security, if you rely on a third-party software provider to keep your business going, you can’t control how secure their operations are.

With SaaS Escrow, AccessAssure independently monitors your software provider’s financial position, triggering a cascade of events should anomalies rise, leaving your cloud-based software accessible for at least three months of business continuity. It offers you that peace of mind and an extra layer of security against any nasty surprises.

Got more questions? Just give us a call today on 0800 456 1115 to discuss further.

The post What’s the cost of a cyberattack on your business? appeared first on LE&AS.

Even if your employees are predominantly back in the office, you can expect that there will be a desire amongst future workers that remote working is offered as an option.

Why is remote working a security risk?

Remote working presents a challenge for business security because remote work environments don’t often have the same safeguards that an office environment would. Your employees will not be protected by those layers of preventative security controls that you may have put in place previously. When computers are taken away from the office, new risks arise; data encryption, unsecured wireless connections and the potential loss or theft of devices and data.

The good news is that evidence shows that many businesses are aware of this. In fact, UK Google searches for ‘cyber defense’ went up by 126% between January and March 2020. That’s up 116% from March 2019. Additionally, searches for other cybersecurity-related terms such as ‘cybersecurity services’ also increased by 44%.

So, what can business owners enforce to ensure that remote working is as safe as possible – now and in the future?

Avoid public wifi

This is perhaps one to flag with your workforce when the cafes reopen, but this also applies to those who may do a little work on the train whilst commuting, for example. Public wifi introduces a significant security risk and should be avoided where possible. Public wifi is just that – public. Other people can access it and therefore, the risk increases of them being able to also access your computer.

If you or your employees are out and about and need an internet connection, then encourage them to use personal hotspots from their phones instead. Although web traffic will be unencrypted between the hotspot and its destination, using a hotspot does eliminate the risk of getting hacked by those using public wifi.

Stick to using work computers

Where possible, encourage your team to stick to using work computers to complete their work. Accessing work data on personal laptops is a risk unless these personal laptops have a secure wifi connection, a VPN, encrypted drives and anti-virus software. If not, a personal laptop may not be safe for work information, as it could be compromised by a third party much easier.

Even just checking and answering a few work emails on your personal laptop one evening once you’ve returned from work can be a risk – let alone if your team began working on a personal laptop 9-5 once they made the work-from-home switch.

Make use of encryption

When minimising the risk of remote working, encryption will be your business’s best friend. Think about all those emails you send that may contain sensitive data. What happens if that is intercepted by a third party? By encrypting the data attached to an email, it prevents anyone unintended from viewing the information.

You could also ask that your employees encrypt their home wifi network. For example, their wifi router may not have a very strong password to protect the settings and configuration. The default passwords tend to be weak. Could they change this to something stronger?

Password management

And speaking of passwords, if you and your team use simple or identical passwords across different accounts, this also puts your business at risk. Although it makes passwords easier to remember, it also makes passwords easier to guess. Perhaps now is the time to run a password audit?

Alphanumeric codes and the use of two-factor authentication should become mandatory to make passwords as complex as possible and to add an extra layer of protection. It’s also a good idea to use a password manager platform, such as LastPass. LastPass stores your passwords securely and also generates complex and strong new passwords for you. If team members need to share passwords with each other, LastPass allows a way to do this safely as opposed to through an email or instant messaging platform.

Educate your team to be security savvy

It’s no use one or two people on your team being passionate about keeping the business secure – it only takes one person to make a mistake or two and security can become compromised. Your team may have no idea of the risks they face when working outside of the office, so it is up to you as a business owner to educate them.

This should include simple policies around keeping personal use and work use as separate as possible, avoiding letting their friends, family and children use their work system, and educating them on security risks such as phishing scams.

Unfortunately, online scams have dramatically increased since the COVID-19 pandemic. Action Fraud reveals that there have been over 200 reports of coronavirus-related phishing scams. Perhaps you could create a quiz for your team and present them with real and scam emails, and see if they can correctly spot the difference. It’s vital that they understand what legitimate communication looks like, and false communication.

Use secure cloud-based services

Instead of storing confidential and sensitive data locally, use secure cloud-based services where possible. Not only do cloud-based services allow you to run your business more efficiently (particularly when your team is working remotely), but they also offer much better security. A cloud host’s full-time job is to carefully monitor security, making it much safer to keep critical business data offsite.

A staggering 94% of businesses saw an improvement in security after switching to cloud-based services, and 91% said that the cloud makes it easier to meet government compliance requirements. Cloud-based services are hot on encryption, making it as difficult as possible for hackers or anyone unauthorised to view your data.

However, it’s important not to wholeheartedly rely on your cloud-based services. What happens if they become compromised? They are not immune from cyberattacks or going into administration. You rely on their consistent connection and if that is lost, how would you continue to operate? Your data will still exist, but you may not have a contractual right to access it.

That’s where SaaS Escrow comes into play. SaaS Escrow protects your critical cloud-based and off-premise software in the event of your hosting provider going out of business. It allows you to access your data for at least three months of business continuity, so you can continue with business as usual.

Don’t be without this extra layer of protection for your business. Contact us to learn more about SaaS Escrow by calling 0800 456 1115.

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Internet security is a real issue these days, with hackers becoming wiser and wiser to new strategies to get their hands on your data; think data breaches, theft and vulnerability to viruses. It’s particularly worrying for many businesses today who rely on storing their data digitally in the cloud or on a server, or for those who rely on a third party other than their software provider. It’s important to review your data security, and who has access to it.

Assess your data

Start by deciding what data within your business needs to be protected and where this data is located. Think about anything that would lose you sales or customers if it failed, or anything that would impact your customer service processes, damage to your business’s reputation, resources required to perform priority tasks and important reference materials or operating procedures. Generally speaking, any critical business process will equate to critical business data.

Also, if something should happen to your software provider, how easy will it be to retrieve your business critical data? Many SaaS application’s data is stored alongside other End Users data and sometimes on a number of different servers. End Users may consider requesting a regular data download to a server under their control and in a format that is transferable to alternative applications.

It can be expensive to protect every single piece of data within your business, which is why it is important to make an assessment and prioritise what is truly critical. This is usually around 20% of your total business data. Ask key people within your business what data they need to stay afloat and what they could temporarily function without. You may feel like you are managing exceptional circumstances, but it’s something you may wish to consider if you don’t want your business to be a casualty of another business out of your control.

Who can access

Next, ask yourself who has access to your business critical data. Is it your employees? If so, it’s important to ensure that they know how to handle this data and how to keep it safe. Everyone who manages, administers or operates IT infrastructure needs to become security conscious, so make this a focus within your business culture. Could you offer training to your team on the risks and threats of potential data loss? This is a good way to enforce and remind individuals of their role in business security so that it becomes second nature to them.

Ask yourself who has access to your business critical data. Suppliers? External agencies? Your hosting or software provider? Any other third party companies? If something were to happen to these businesses, what would happen to your business critical data? You may not have considered the contractual obligations of third parties.

For example, many of us quite rightly would not expect Amazon AWS or Microsoft Azure to go out of business anytime soon. However, if they are hosting your application and data and the contract with them is through your software provider, they are not obligated, structured or likely to be inclined to deal with you if your software provider goes out of business for whatever reason. Similarly, as an End User, you may have no experience of managing the Azure platform for instance in order to maintain access to your software.

Disaster-proof your data

Using digital and cloud-based solutions boasts so many advantages, but will always come with its risks. You’re relying on their security and a consistent connection with providers and external threats could interrupt or break that connection. What happens if your software provider goes out of business? Your software and data will still exist but you may not have a contractual right to access it. You’ll want to make sure you have some extra protection in place.

Make SaaS escrow part of your disaster plan. It protects your critical cloud-based and off-premise software and data in the event of your software or hosting provider going out of business. Instead of being left with a blank screen and inaccessible data, your cloud-based software and data will be accessible for at least three months of business continuity. If you’d like to know more, give us a call today on 0800 456 1115.

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What are the threats to my SaaS?

Cyber technology has revolutionised retail business, but as wonderful as it is, there are many reasons why things can go wrong.  Cloud-based business-critical software is dependent on your host provider/software developer maintaining their service. As with any cyber-based service, bugs and viruses are often considered the main concern to SaaS users, but in this turbulent economy, the biggest threat is actually your providers going out of business.

eCommerce emergency

So, what happens if your providers cease trading? Often the first knowledge of a problem with your software provider is when you receive the dreaded blank screen on your systems. At this point, you go to your providers who should (but may not) inform you that they have gone into administration. You may have lost some or all access to your software as a service, so you will then be faced with the mad scramble to get your services hosted and/or provided by someone else.

Prevention is better than cure

The LE&AS SaaS escrow agreement, AccessAssure, can help you stay one step ahead of blank screen syndrome by identifying potential disruptions to your service. AccessAssure proactively monitors your software provider and key triggers identify a change in their financial circumstances that may indicate potential disruptions to their service. When these triggers are activated it prompts a cascade that will inform you of the changes. The advance warning will give you ample opportunity to consider moving your software to a new host. Furthermore, under our SaaS escrow, your existing software provider would be bound to facilitate this move.

In order to uphold access to your services and maintain eCommerce continuity, stay one step ahead this season with LE&AS. Call our team now on 0800 456 1115.

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When things go wrong

Ask yourself the question; what if the unthinkable happened and your technology failed today? What if you were to lose access to your Software as a Service (SaaS) or watch client data be wiped from your hard drive? How long could your business actually survive without access to emails, data and software? A matter of weeks or a matter of minutes? The cold hard fact is that if our business technology fails then our businesses will likely fail also, unless we step in and do something about it fast.

Why things go wrong

Like most things in life, business technology is not invincible, and even the most robust ICT systems can and do fail. There are many reasons for this, it could be due to hackers or human error, or it could be due to a software provider failing to complete vital updates, or going into administration. Bespoke business software is often cloud-based or accessed via a software provider who holds the source code, so should this access fail or the service be withdrawn, end users are left with redundant software or a complete loss of all client data.

What can we do about it?

Preparation is the key to overcoming a business technology crisis, and contingency plans should be included in your business plan for when things go wrong alongside strategies to help you succeed. In the event of business technology failure, you will rely on these contingency plans to regain access to, and use of your business software and data as soon as possible. Regular backups should be completed and tested, but savvy entrepreneurs will go one step further and protect their business software before a crisis hits, and this is where Software Escrow comes in.

Why Software Escrow is the solution

Software Escrow is the perfect solution to protect your business technology as it enables you to gain access to your source code quickly in the event of a crisis. At LE&AS we offer a specific SaaS escrow agreement, AccessAssure, which features built in trigger points to highlight any potential issues with the provider in advance. We work hard to help you maintain your business continuity, so let LE&AS manage your escrow and give you total peace of mind.

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