Two years ago (has it been that long?) we migrated all client documentation to individual wikis (one for each client). Our old Lotus Notes system was limited and did not allow for easy collaboration. The original wiki roll-out contemplated supporting two types of collaboration:

• client < -> architel collaboration
• architel engineering < -> architel support < -> architel management collaboration

Collaboration seemed like a great idea, but exposing secure information to the internet has become more and more difficult. While we wanted clients to have the ability to access and modify some information in their wiki, we wanted to keep other information such as passwords private. We came up with a system that allowed clients to see ‘part’ of the wiki, but soon our security experts were concerned with various known exploits that might take advantage of this dual security system. Our solution was to eliminate the dual access, and as it turns out very few of our clients were doing much collaboration anyway. But there were a few that insisted on access and we gave them admin level access to their wikis. Recently, we became aware of another security risk and as a result we have discontinued ALL access to client wikis from the Internet (for both clients and employees). Client wikis are now only available from within our physical network.

This presents a problem for our technicians in the field and we have established several secure VPNs to accommodate their remote access, but the setup is not ideal so we are working on a new design that should ensure we can securely provide wiki access through the internet sometime in the future. Once we have done so, we will work on opening client access back up. In the meantime, all wiki access is limited to those who have physical access to our network. We apologize for the inconvenience, but the security of our client’s data must be our first priority. Read more here.