EPAOs choose to use the ACE360 system for managing apprentice records for their End-Point Assessment activity and detail the following IT Security information in their ESFA application.
“ACE360 is the industry leading apprenticeship standards management software, that has been developed by the Federation for Industry Sector Skills and Standards (FISSS). FISSS have been trusted to manage the contract for Framework certification and have stored evidence for over 2 million apprentices since 2012 in their ACE, ACW and MA online systems. The data centre for ACE360 is ISO27001 and ISO9001 certified and the Federation hold Cyber Essential Plus certificate for their cloud services. ACE360 is hosted on the Federation Private Cloud within a Tier 3 certified data centre.
"The system should only go down for routine, planned maintenance.  Notice of which will be sent out to users. ACE360 is backed up in two secure UK locations using VEAM, the storage it uses is set up in RAID 10.  The servers are failover tested twice a year to ensure failover acts as expected.  The storage arrays have 4 hour mission critical support. Penetration testing is undertaken annually by an external partner, and vulnerability scans are undertaken on a weekly basis of the Federation network.  In Addition, ACE360 has a tested business continuity plan was a disaster recovery site, ensuring that in the event of the disaster recovery plan requiring to be implemented all systems and staff can be operational within four hours.”