In our electronic Warrant of Fitness (eWOF) system—also referred to as an e-checksheet or e-check sheet—we manage critical vehicle safety information. Protecting this data is our top priority. To ensure your digital check sheets are always secure, backed up, and accessible, we use a combination of advanced cloud storage, frequent backups, and robust user authentication. Let’s dive into how it all works.
1. Main Storage: AWS S3
We store all digital check sheets in AWS S3, a secure cloud storage service provided by Amazon, a leader in cloud technology. AWS S3 serves as our primary storage system, and here’s why it’s the ideal choice:
- Reliability: AWS S3 automatically keeps copies of your data in multiple locations, ensuring it’s always available and safe from loss.
- Security: All data in S3 is encrypted, which means it’s digitally locked so only authorized users can access it.
- Scalability: AWS S3 can grow as we store more e-check sheets, ensuring no disruptions in service as we expand.
This secure foundation ensures that your eWOF check sheets are stored safely and can be accessed whenever needed.
2. Secondary Backup Every 5 Minutes
In addition to storing e-check sheets in AWS S3, we back them up with another cloud storage provider every five minutes. This secondary backup system provides both incremental backups every five minutes and full backups on a daily basis, ensuring multiple layers of protection. Here’s what this means for you:
- Redundancy: If there’s ever an issue with AWS, our secondary cloud provider ensures we still have up-to-date copies of all check sheets. The incremental backups every five minutes capture the latest changes, while the full backups taken daily ensure complete copies of all data.
- Minimal Data Loss Risk: With the 5-minute incremental backups, even the most recent changes to your e-check sheet data are protected. The daily full backups give us a comprehensive safety net, ensuring that no data is lost in case of system issues.
This combination of frequent incremental backups and comprehensive daily full backups ensures your data is safe, no matter what happens.
3. Email Backups for Extra Safety
As soon as you create a checksheet, we also send copies of completed e-check sheets via email as part of our backup strategy:
- Internal Email Backups: Every completed e-checksheet is automatically sent to our internal team’s email system. This acts as another layer of backup to keep records safe.
- Client Email Copies: A copy of each completed e-checksheet is also sent directly to you, the client. This ensures you always have your own copy of the records for your convenience.
By combining cloud storage with email backups, we ensure that both we and our clients always have access to the latest e-check sheets, even if other systems are temporarily unavailable.
4. User Sign-Up and Authentication with OAuth 2.0
To keep the system secure and ensure only authorized users can access sensitive data, we use OAuth 2.0 for sign-up and authentication. OAuth 2.0 is a widely trusted protocol that ensures secure authorization and access management. Here’s how it protects your data:
Secure Sign-Ins:
Your account is protected by strong passwords and, if enabled, multi-factor authentication (MFA). This ensures that even if someone tries to access your account, they won’t succeed without your authorization.
Data Privacy and Security:
OAuth 2.0 ensures that only authorized users can access sensitive information, such as e-check sheets and other system features. Customer data, including vehicle details, is encrypted and securely stored, so you can trust that all personal and vehicle information is safeguarded at all times.
Seamless Experience:
While highly secure, OAuth 2.0 also offers a smooth and user-friendly experience, making it easy for you to sign in and access the system without complications.
This robust authentication system ensures that both your eWOF data and your customers’ information are protected from unauthorized access at all times.
5. Backup and Storage Instructions
In addition to our cloud-based backup system, the NZTA (New Zealand Transport Agency) has requested that we ensure there are multiple backups and redundancies for WOF check sheets, including the ability to access them locally in case you cannot reach our online system. To meet this request, we are now automatically emailing you a PDF copy of each completed WOF check sheet as soon as you tap the “Create Checksheet” button. Here’s how it works:
Email Backups:
You will receive an email with a PDF copy of the WOF check sheet immediately after it is created. This ensures that you always have a backup of the check sheet stored in your email account.
Email Folder Setup:
It is your responsibility to set up a folder in your email account to store these WOF check sheet emails. You can either manually move each WOF PDF email into this folder or set up an automatic email filter to store the WOF results emails directly into that folder.
Offline Access for Rechecks:
If you cannot access our server (for example, during WOF rechecks or if you or the customer does not have a printed paper copy), you can retrieve the necessary WOF check sheet from the email folder. Simply open the folder, search for the registration number (rego number), and open the corresponding WOF recheck PDF. You can then print the sheet and manually fill in the results with pen and paper. Once our system is back online, you can enter the results into the system.
We also recommend keeping one or two old WOF check sheet books securely stored away as a backup, in case you need to manually process a WOF in the event of a prolonged system outage.
Why This Matters
By using a combination of AWS S3, a secondary cloud backup, email copies, and advanced authentication with Auth0, we ensure that your e-check sheets are:
- Safe: Stored securely with multiple backups to protect against loss or damage.
- Accessible: Easily available to you and authorized users whenever needed.
- Reliable: Redundant systems ensure there’s no single point of failure.
This approach, combining cloud storage, and email backups, ensures your eWOF check sheets are always protected, accessible, and available for use—even during unexpected disruptions.