Keeping data inside Canada, and out of the US, has become a bit of a hot topic lately among IT solution providers. But why? And what sort of data are we talking about?

The NSA caught major headlines in 2013 with the Edward Snowden debacle. Questions started arising in the mainstream media about what digital information the US government has access to. Suddenly everyone was talking about the ‘Patriot Act‘. Essentially With the Patriot Act, if your data is stored on servers in the USA then it can be accessed by the US government. Government agencies routinely ask for access to data on servers in the States and often the owners of that data are never notified.   This led many large organizations and watchdogs in Canada to start discussing keeping corporate data inside Canada.

So what sort of data are companies looking to keep in Canada? Online backup has become largely affordable for small and medium business. The hassle of changing drives and tapes to backup your critical data has been replaced with a seamless and secure process of transferring files offsite to a server located elsewhere. Email Hosting and communications are also under scrutiny. Are the critical emails and communications within your organization staying inside Canada?

[responsive][/responsive]How is Partek reacting to our clients that wish to keep their data in Canada? Recently we provisioned our own dedicated server for online backup that is located in a Data Centre in Canada – Montreal to be precise. Our dedicated server means only we have access to it and can confidently inform our clients that their online backup data is safe and secure. We also recently switched our Microsoft Hosted Exchange provider to an all-Canadian provider, again insuring that email and communications stay within Canada.

If you want to learn more about the specifics of our Canadian solutions, please contact us directly.