The Inkling prediction market platform is offered to our customers as "software as a service" which means we do all the dirty work. You have no IT footprint in your data centers, no software to maintain, instantaneous feature enhancements and bug fixes, and no IT resources to spend.

Your hosted marketplace can either be run publicly with its own domain and look and feel or internally with access limited by email domain, invite list, or IP address.

To provide this level of service we have chosen to partner with Logicworks, a SAS 70 Type II audited datacenter. If you've never heard of SAS 70, here's a layman's overview of what it means. SAS 70:

• Is an acronym for Statement on Auditing Standard 70; it was developed and is maintained by the AICPA (American Institute of Certified Public Accountants);
• Shows Inkling that the service organization (in this case Logicworks) has been thoroughly checked and deemed to have satisfactory controls and safeguards either when hosting specific information or processing information such as data belonging to our customers;
• Requires audits be conducted annually by a certified public accountant or CPA firm.

There are two types of audits that can be performed. A "Type I" audit is a review of controls and procedures. A "Type II" audit is a rigorous test of those controls and procedures over a 6-month timeframe. We're happy to say Logicworks undergoes and has passed a Type II audit.

How does this directly relate to us? Among other things, it means we have a service level agreement so our servers are patched on a timely basis, security bulletins are monitored and acted upon as necessary, log files are reviewed, and access to our servers is tightly controlled and monitored. It also means a high level of guaranteed "up-time", redundancy, and a comprehensive disaster recovery plan.

Using a SAS 70 hosting provider is only a first layer of defense in providing a secure platform. We've implemented many application level security precautions as well, from various levels of access controls to providing all corporate clients SSL to enabling single sign-on with your corporate authentication system to minimizing registration data requirements to protect your employees' identities. We obviously cannot go in to detail about all our security controls but if you are interested in learning more, please contact us.