In recent years, XMission has greatly expanded our focus on business products, including colocation, advanced web hosting (with our Stackable cloud product), hosted email (with Zimbra), and business telephony. As those products matured, it was only a matter of time before we saw the need to perform this audit, especially as enterprise clients started to look more seriously at XMission as a vendor. While we are a privately held company, and therefore have no Sarbanes Oxley compliancy concerns ourselves, we recognized that compliance sensitive companies often require SSAE 16 certification, which include publicly-traded enterprises, financial firms, and healthcare organizations.

Ultimately, I think that all of the work we did in preparation for the audit brought about many positive changes. While we have done many things related to IT security for years not only due to our own commitment to best practices but also to maintain PCI compliancy, we took this opportunity to review and refine our policies and procedures. We performed a new risk assessment and found better ways to mitigate, if not outright prevent, a few more potential issues. We had some productive conversations and better organized our documentation. All in all, the process brought renewed rigor and focus to things that warrant close scrutiny on an annual basis.

In order to complete the audit, XMission management developed rigorous internal control objectives to support first-class data center, hosting and networking management services. You can think of internal controls as the processes by which an organization manages its people and systems. It is how a business conducts business, day to day. These controls should be closely aligned with an entity’s goals and objectives. When an outside auditor comes in, they first review the organization’s control objectives to determine if they appear to be reasonable and then secondly test their processes and see if the entity reliably meets those objectives. Professing best practices isn’t enough; the proof is in the pudding. And since we chose a type 2 audit, we were required to prove the operating effectiveness of our internal controls throughout the audit period. Abiding by new requirements under SSAE 16, the report also contains a written assertion from management regarding the systems and a services auditor’s opinion letter.

An SSAE 16 audit report provides a framework for a service organization to have an outside entity examine their internal controls, which can then be provided to its enterprise clients. Therefore, an SSAE 16 certification assures new and existing customers that XMission’s policies and procedures are sound and that their critical Internet services and data are secure. Colocation and Stackable customers can request a copy of our audit report, which should make it easier for them to pass their own SSAE 16 audit. If anything is missing which could help them with their own audit, or better set them at ease regarding the products they purchase from XMission, we gladly welcome such requests. We have already started to evaluate how we will expand the scope in next year’s audit.

Our audit was conducted by CPA firm A-lign, who specializes in these audits for IT firms. SSAE 16 replaces the previous industry standard, SAS 70 and brings the US closer to the international standard, ISAE 3402.

For more information, please visit xmission.com/SSAE16.

Grant Sperry

XMission VP of Operations

Of course, XMission has always provided local support. All of our support technicians are based in Salt Lake City, Utah although some do work from home these days, for at least part of the week.

Last year around this time I wrote an article for our blog mentioning several of the stellar titles that were shipping in time for the holidays.  Some of them ended up being awesome, and some not quite as much, but it’s clear that last Christmas was fantastic in terms of new games being released.

This year I’m going to do something a little different.  I’ll still be talking about some new releases but they’ll mainly be focused on titles that have already shipped and that I’ve had a chance to play.  And rather than try to analyze them critically and attach a numerical score to their merits I’ll simply endeavor to point out interesting aspects of the game and overall experience.   What this means is there’s going to be an emphasis placed on PS3 games, since thats the platform I use most often.  And now, on to the games!

First up is Uncharted 2.  This is the sequel to a game that I never played when it was released.  It looked too much like Tomb Raider for my taste and I never bothered to try it.  So, going into Uncharted 2, I didn’t have many expectations other than to see what everyone was so giddy over.  I picked it up to play for an hour and call it good but became so engrossed that I played it at every opportunity over the course of the next 3 weeks until I had finished it.  This alone says something about the game because I play so many that I rarely have the interest or time to complete one from start to finish.

The gameplay itself is a sort of mashup of stealth action in the style of Metal Gear, cover-based gunplay in the style of Gears of War and hand to hand fighting similar to many 3rd person beat-em-ups.   None of the various elements on their own are very standout, but they work well enough together to give you a variety of (fun) options in completing a level.

Where this game really shines (and shines and shines) is in its story and presentation.  The levels are designed so that big things can happen to you while you play and you’ll still be able to retain full control of your character during the event.  Things that are relegated to cinematics in other games remain fully playable in Uncharted 2.   The story is something because, while it borrows conventions from nearly every action adventure movie in existence, it never felt snooze-inducingly derivative and had enough twists and turns to keep me wanting to play more to see how it progressed.  The writing is well done and the voice acting is head and shoulders above nearly every game I’ve played before.

The easiest way to describe this game would be to call it an interactive cinematic adventure.  Much like a great TV series such as Battlestar Galactica or the first season of Heroes, Uncharted 2 kept me coming back for more.

The next game on deck is Demons Souls.  This game pretty much came out of nowhere and I didn’t even hear about it until the day of its release.  I’m glad I did though because this game is amazing.  From top to bottom this game has been crafted meticulously and it really shows.

Demons Souls is a clumsily titled action RPG that has passing similarities to many games in its genre.  You control your avatar, get loot, level up and slay demons.  What sets this game apart from the rest is its masterfully crafted atmosphere and insane difficulty.  The game is designed in a manner that if you just go in swinging you’ll be dead at the first demon.  Combat feels weighty but never slow and the animations really convey the feeling that swinging a sword is difficult.  You also discover that swinging a sword without getting stabbed in the ribs is also difficult.  And while combat is tough, it’s not unfair, and soon you learn the timing of your weapons as well as all the dark corners where nasty things are hiding to murder you.  Expect to die and die and die, but also expect to have a lot of fun doing it.

The atmosphere is also top-notch.  Environments range from the ramparts and halls of a castle the size of a small city, to claustrophobic mines and creepy asylums as well as several others.  The level designs are well thought out and do a great job of selling the feeling that this is a maximalist interpretation of dark heroic fantasy.  In the levels you rarely meet other humans, even as enemies, and when you do they are corrupted husks or gruffly annoyed with your presence.  This really helps give you a feeling of loneliness as you play.  The game has a quasi online mode where you can see the ghosts of other people who are playing the game at the same time as you, but they fade in and out, lasting only a few moments at a time.   You can’t interact with these ghosts but they are a great addition.

Be warned:  this game is super tough, but the difficulty is very rewarding.  My recommendation?  Play it alone with the lights off.

I can assure you that the Internet did not evolve with your privacy in mind. Did you know that every search you make is recorded and archived by the search company? This is standard practice for every major search engine such as Google, Yahoo, Bing, etc.

A friend pointed me to a Firefox web browser plug-in called Scroogle which would allow me to privatize my searches. Scroogle serves as a Google search proxy making it so Google cannot track searches to build a profile and gather information on you. Scroogle destroys cookies and purges all logs within 2 days.

Scroogle plug-in for Firefox works great and even blocks the ads within your search. The company is run by GoogleWatch.

You may also refer to proxy.org for a list of web browsing proxy sites. Web proxies are not as convenient as a browser plug-in but are ideal for some situations.

XM

Register now at http://attend.utosc.com. Registration lasts until October 10, 2009 but you’ll save some money if you register before September 19.

To read about the presenters, keynotes, activities, workshops and more, please visit http://2009.utosc.com

Thanks to the Utah Open Source Conference for extending this discount!

Apple’s ‘Software Update…’ will not notify of this critical update. Please head to Version test for Adobe Flash Player to test if you are running an old version 10,0,23,1. If so, download and install the update.

Here are the details:

Ignite Salt Lake 3 (visit their website)
Thursday, August 20, 2009
6:00 – 10:00 pm
Admission is Free

Murray Theater
4959 South State Street
Murray, Utah

In partnership with Utah Free Media, XMission will sponsor a live video broadcast from the event. You can access the broadcast at www.utahfm.org

XMission is the primary sponsor for tonight’s Twilight Concert Series.

Come on down to the Gallivan Center Plaza to hear Sonic Youth and Awesome Color along with a few thousand of your closest friends.

Click on image to see larger sized version of this poster by Casey Burns (posted by Sonic Youth):

Don’t forget that XMission provides free wifi on the plaza so you can stay connected whenever you are at the Gallivan.

Stop by our booth and say “Hi” to the XMission crew!

When:
Friday, June 19, 2009
9 p.m. to 10:30 p.m.

Where:
BFS Warehouse
555 South 400 West
Salt Lake City, UT 84101

This collection, which focuses on graphics hardware, includes:

• SGI workstations and servers from the Personal Iris 4D/25 through a 4 rack SGI Reality Monster
• Tektronix graphics terminals from storage scope terminals like the 4010 and 4014 to raster terminals like the 4105 and 4205.
• Evans & Sutherland products including ESV workstations with CDRS 6.0 and Advanced Rendering System, Freedom series graphics accelerators, and ESIG image generators
• Aesthedes graphic design system
• Control Data Corporation CC545 Console
• Megatek 3D graphics terminal with the coolest keyboard you’ve ever seen

Additional information about the museum can be found here.