Financial institutions are those businesses engaged in banking, insuring, stocks and bonds, financial advice, investing, and the payment card industry.  (Traders click here.) These organizations are under pressure to be compliant with an increasing number of federal and industry regulations. Among these are Sarbanes Oxley, the Order Audit Trail System (OATS), and the Visa Payment Card Industry Data (PCI) Security Standard.
 

Regulations Require Accurate Timestamps

These regulations require that all financial transactions and changes to electronic records be accurately timestamped. Accurate timestamping supports audits and other forms of authentication verification. To provide accurate timestamps all network devices need to be synchronized relative to national and international time standards.

Using a Time Server on the Internet is a Security Risk

One way to synchronize the time across your IT network is to access an Internet Time Server. This is a security risk because it requires you to open port 123 in the firewall, creating an entry point for hackers.

A Time Server Behind Your Firewall is More Secure

The best solution for time synchronization is to install a reliable and secure source of network time inside your firewall. This will ensure accurate timestamping of all electronic records and transactions. We offer several different time server models which will synchronize your network time to Coordinated Universal Time (UTC). UTC is recognized and used worldwide as the time standard for electronic record timestamping. Our time servers obtain UTC through either the Global Positioning System (GPS) or through the CDMA cell phone system. Both systems are extremely reliable sources of time.