New Century Title

Secure, Continuous Protection for Remote Office Data

"Before using LiveVault’s Online Backup & Recovery Service, we were really rolling the dice," says Jody Elkins, Vice President of IT at New Century Title, a title and escrow company based in San Diego, California. New Century Title has 22 branch offices across the state, ranging from fairly large operations with 80-100 employees, down to small offices with only 2-3 employees. Elkins has a limited staff, and it was impossible to regularly visit remote offices to verify if backups and offsite storage were taking place properly.

The company handles real estate transactions on behalf of mortgage brokers and lending institutions. Escrow officers in the branch offices create preliminary reports, insurance forms, loan documents, termite inspections, and a myriad of other records related to the sale or refinance of real estate. All escrow and title data is stored on servers in remote offices, and backed up continuously using LiveVault Online Backup Service.

As employees in remote offices create and update real estate records, LiveVault backs up all new data immediately and automatically. Data is encrypted and sent over the Internet using a secure private connection to a LiveVault backup server within a data center. LiveVault’s unique online backup technology replicates data at the byte-level, as changes occur, enabling continuous remote backup over a network.

Each remote office has a Windows NT 4.0 server running a Pervasive database. Corruption of files and indexes, while rare, does happen occasionally. Using LiveVault, data can now be restored to within a few minutes of when the damage occurred. Previously, if an index became corrupted at 4 PM, the company would have to restore the index and associated files from the night before, resulting in the loss of a day’s work. The impact could be devastating: if title or escrow documents were not available, real estate transactions could be severely delayed or jeopardized.

Remote Monitoring and Control
Using the MyLiveVault™ web management interface, Elkins can now effectively manage backups and restores from any location with an Internet connection. The intuitive interface allows him to define and launch restores of individual files, directories, or entire systems. He can also oversee restores in progress, view a listing of servers and directories being backed up, and specify new directories.

Fortunately, New Century Title has not had a server crash recently, but – just to be safe – Elkins conducted a mock data recovery using LiveVault. He connected a spare server (with Pervasive software pre-installed) in one of the smaller remote offices, logged into LiveVault, and restored the database over the secure Internet connection. "It worked beautifully. Within 30 minutes we were up and running."

Previously, the task of managing backups was left to an escrow secretary, who was expected to perform backups and swap tapes on schedule. Even if the secretary was able to perform backups every night – an optimistic assumption – there was still the problem of offsite storage. The company was relying on secretaries and escrow officers to take tapes home and store them in the right order. "It was a nightmare," Elkins admits. "In 95% of our offices, if the building had burned down, we would have had to recreate that office from scratch."

Power Failure Protection
LiveVault data protection is also a strong advantage during a power failure – a critical concern in California. Elkins points out that sometimes a Uninterruptible Power Supply (UPS) will fail or not complete a safe shutdown after a power loss. As a result, when the server comes back up, database indexes and files can be corrupted.

"I feel much safer now. An IT guy like me is always on pins and needles when power comes back up until you know that everything is working correctly. This is especially true if the server is at a remote location and you’re not there. Now I know that if a server doesn’t come up properly, I can re-build that office within a few minutes of when it went down. In my industry, that’s huge."

Protecting New E-Commerce Processes
New Century Title is moving to position itself as a true e-commerce based title and escrow service. New interfaces under development will allow the company and its clients to communicate via an extranet to securely share loan records and information, eliminating duplicate data entry work. Records will be backed up using LiveVault Online Backup Service within a few minutes after being posted to the New Century Title database.

The Cost Effective Backup Solution
"LiveVault solves a lot of issues for me," adds Elkins. "LiveVault gives me up to the minute backups – a critical advantage that nobody else offers – and it provides offsite storage, easy management, and saves on headcount." Without LiveVault, he would have had to hire someone to make sure that backups were taking place properly. In contrast, backups with LiveVault are automated, and no user intervention is necessary.

"Based on what I pay for the service and what I would have to pay to hire somebody, LiveVault is easily saving us $20-30 thousand per year, while providing better protection than anything else out there."

Elkins is also convinced that LiveVault Online Backup Service is a competitive differentiator. "For clients that understand the importance of data, I believe LiveVault Online Backup Service will mean a great deal. It shows that we are extremely concerned about our customers’ data and the ability to process transactions responsibly and efficiently."