For obvious reasons, we will not provide full details of our data security approaches. However, we can provide an overview for those who may have a technical interest in our backend.

All data is stored in a Microsoft Azure SQL database with IP restricted access. This means that database access is only available to users coming from known and approved IP addresses which provides a very high level of security on top of the existing security architecture that comes “out of the box” with Azure and SQL Server.

Our public APIs (the connections from the app to the backend services) are all protected using TLS 1.2 or greater at the transport level and the calls to our backend are further protected by an application level security token that is unique to each transaction. Although this does not guarantee that the system cannot be hacked, it does make it highly tamper resistent.

There are other security measures in place, and we feel that the value of the data stored within our system is worth less than the effort it would require to extract that data, which is a primary goal of information security systems.

We are very concerned about privacy and security, especially considering how irresponsible many companies have been with the sensitive data of their users. Our philosophy is to collect only the data that we absolutely need in order to provide benefits to users of Harrier Central.

In terms of personal information, all we collect is your first and last name, email address and Hash name. We also use your current location (if you authorize the app to do so) in order to show you runs that are in your vicinity and also to set app preferences (e.g. should we show you distances in miles or kilometers). Finally, we also capture parametric data on your mobile device and web browser (e.g. which OS your are running, what type of phone you have) only to aid us in troubleshooting / debugging.

We also collect information on your runs with Kennels that are in Harrier Central. This enables us to maintain your run counts in our secure and resilient cloud hosted database. If you’ve ever been associated with a Kennel that has maintained run count information in an Excel spreadsheet or other database only to have that information lost, you know how frustrating it can be. With Harrier Central, this is no longer a concern.

In addition to the information we collect to provide you with features and benefits, we also collect information specifically to help mismanagement manage their Hash Kennels. This can include keeping track of who has paid, how much was paid, and how they paid (e.g. cash, bank transfer, PayPal, etc.). While we may store some banking information associated with Kennels in order to support easy mobile payments, we do not store any banking information related to individual Hashers.

All information we collect is maintained within our “walled garden” and is not shared with any third party.

If you have any specific questions about our information management practices, please reach out to us using our contact form or at connect@harriercentral.com

The entire Harrier Central technology stack is built within the Microsoft Azure cloud platform. Although this is a more expensive option than many other cloud providers or a privately hosted server, we have selected Azure for its security, ease of administration, ability to scale globally and broad range of built-in functions.

Currently our main database is hosted in the Northern Europe data center located in Ireland with a redundant backup held in the Western Europe data center located in Amsterdam. As our user base expands, we plan geo-replicate this database to Azure data centers located in the United States, Hong Kong, China and Australia. This will further ensure redundancy and improve performance for our global user base.