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Information Systems Services
Acquia

Migration of DCU to Acquia

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In March the web team in ISS managed the very successful migration of the DCU website to a new externally hosted managed service with Acquia. TheDCU website now resides in a secure enterprise-level hosting environment optimised for DCU.

The DCU website is now fully HTTPS...

HTTPS is a way to encrypt information that you send between a browser and a web server. This protects your website’s users from “man-in-the-middle” attacks, where someone steals the information being sent to a website, like credit card information or logins.

Historically, HTTPS connections have primarily been used for sites that contain sensitive information, but you’ve probably seen more and more sites making the switch lately. As HTTPS has become easier to implement, secure connections are becoming the standard for all websites.

What Is an SSL Certificate?

An SSL Certificate is a set of data files that you can add to your server to achieve an encrypted connection between a browser and your server. When installed, a green padlock will be displayed when users visit your site to indicate that the site is secure.

The DCU website now displays this green padlock to indicate an encrypted connection between a browser and your server.

Below is a list of advantages of having the DCU website hosted externally by Acquia.

  • 24 x 7 real-time monitoring of infrastructure and monitoring of DCU website.
  • 24 x 7 global support.
  • Enterprise-level reliability.
  • Multi-datacenter failover.
  • High availability architecture with multi-region replication for disaster recovery of DCU website.
  • Proactive application of latest application security patches and bug fixes for hosting infrastructure and DCU website.
  • Adoption of HTTPS (encryption) only for a more secure DCU Website.
  • Adoption of secure authentication and authorisation of Content Management System users using SAML allowing a seamless browsing experience between all DCU’s web resources.
  • Removal of legacy infrastructure removing complications and inconsistencies for site users and editors.