FirstServ Ltd

Dedicated Cloud Hosting

FirstServ provides new ways to give customers everything they need to manage and control their online space. Innovation drives everything we do, ensuring we offer the latest internet technology across our range of services including domain names, managed cloud servers, secure online storage, online backup, disaster recovery, monitoring, etc.

Features

• Highly available environment
• Fully managed solution
• Professional Monitoring
• Instant Scalability and Customisation
• Managed Firewalls
• Managed Backups
• Disaster Recovery

Benefits

• Reliable environment for your website and applications on the budget
• Protect your critical assets and effectively manage your infrastructure
• Monitoring and fault resolution services
• Upgrade at the click of a button to support growth
• Protect your site from unwanted snooping and harmful DDoS attacks
• Restore your server by booting it directly from the backup
• Managed DRaaS service which leverages the power of our Cloud

£99.00 to £699.00 a server a month

• Education pricing available
• Free trial available

Service documents

• Pricing document

  PDF

• Service definition document

  PDF

• Terms and conditions

  PDF

Request an accessible format

If you use assistive technology (such as a screen reader) and need versions of these documents in a more accessible format, email the supplier at seb@firstserv.com. Tell them what format you need. It will help if you say what assistive technology you use.

Framework

G-Cloud 13

Service ID

250794609939348

Contact

Sebastian Tyc
02030539704
seb@firstserv.com

Service scope

• Service constraints: Platform and programming-related issues are excluded. ; Custom hardware configurations are excluded.
• System requirements:
  • Control Panel - Plesk or cPanel license
  • Operating system - Windows or Linux
  • Microsoft 365 License, ATP P1 with M365, ESET Security
  • Adobe licenses (ColdFusion, DPF)
  • Other licenses (SQL Server License, Sage50, Hosted Desktop)

User support

• Email or online ticketing support: Email or online ticketing
• Support response times: Our service desk operates 24/7/365 and is available at weekends.Tickets raised into our service desk are triaged within 15 minutes. They are then dealt with in line with their priority level in line with our service promise and the Service Level Agreements (SLAs) put in place for that contract.
• User can manage status and priority of support tickets: Yes
• Online ticketing support accessibility: None or don’t know
• Phone support: Yes
• Phone support availability: 9 to 5 (UK time), Monday to Friday
• Web chat support: No
• Onsite support: Onsite support
• Support levels: Our friendly support team are available 24/7 to monitor, advise and make requested changes to your infrastructure. We measure all response times via the myFirstServ support ticket system to ensure we deliver a fast and effective service that is second to none.
• Support available to third parties: Yes

Onboarding and offboarding

• Getting started: We provide online assistance to all customers. Full access to myFirstServ support ticket system enabling customer to monitor and manage your infrastructure. Our friendly support team are available 24/7 to monitor, advise and make requested changes to your infrastructure. We measure all response times via the myFirstServ support ticket system to ensure we deliver a fast and effective service that is second to none. KnowledgeBase a collection of commonly asked questions and their answers. The myFirstServ client area offers the user the choice of browsing through the articles in our KnowledgeBase by category, popular tags or searching based on keywords they enter.
• Service documentation: No
• End-of-contract data extraction: Upon termination of the Agreement, for whatever reason, the Customer should:; - Cease to use the Services and any Software.; - Backup of all Customer's data.; - Erase any Software from the Customer’s systems and confirm to FirstServ that it has done so.
• End-of-contract process: At the end-of-contract agreement FirstServ shall be entitled immediately to block your Cloud Server and to remove all data located on it. FirstServ will hold such data for a period of thirty days and allow The Client to collect it at its own expense, failing which we shall be entitled to delete all such data. At the Client’s request, FirstServ will copy such data to standard USB Pen Drive and make this available for The Client to collect after seven days following termination of the agreement at no cost to The Client. However, FirstServ make no guarantees or warranties with regards to the integrity of all such data.

Using the service

• Web browser interface: Yes
• Using the web interface: The creation of new user accounts and the on-going management of system access are setup through myFirstServ web interface via my.firstserv.com. Client Management is a large part of what the FirstServ platform does. When viewing a client's details a number of tabs are displayed such as Summary, Profile, Products/Services, Orders, Domains, Support tickets, Invoices, Quotes, Transactions, Messages/Emails, etc. Each section of the client area has its own permission setting. The master account holder (and any sub-accounts with the right permissions) can fine-tune the access rights to create different logins for different purposes.; ; Example:; ; Billing Department — Corporate users may have a dedicated billing department that needs access to pay invoices and place new orders, while the web or technical staff would only need access to view current products and services and submit support requests.
• Web interface accessibility standard: None or don’t know
• How the web interface is accessible: MyFirstServ web interface is accessible via my.firstserv.com
• Web interface accessibility testing: None
• API: No
• Command line interface: Yes
• Command line interface compatibility:
  • Linux or Unix
  • Windows
  • MacOS
  • Other
• Using the command line interface: Clients with dedicated solutions have full (root/administrator) access to their server. They are able to use CLI to manage their server including setting custom services or daemons.

Scaling

• Scaling available: Yes
• Scaling type: Manual
• Independence of resources: A VirtualCenter Management Server can centrally manage hundreds of VMware ESX hosts and thousands of virtual machines, delivering operational automation, resource optimization and high availability to IT environments. VirtualCenter provides a single Windows management client for all tasks called the Virtual Infrastructure client. With VirtualCenter, administrators can provision, configure, start, stop, delete, relocate and remotely access virtual machines consoles. The VirtualCenter client is also available in a web browser implementation for access from any networked device.
• Usage notifications: Yes
• Usage reporting:
  • Email
  • Other

Analytics

• Infrastructure or application metrics: Yes
• Metrics types:
  • CPU
  • Disk
  • HTTP request and response status
  • Memory
  • Network
  • Number of active instances
• Reporting types:
  • API access
  • Real-time dashboards
  • Regular reports
  • Reports on request

Resellers

• Supplier type: Not a reseller

Staff security

• Staff security clearance: Conforms to BS7858:2019
• Government security clearance: Up to Baseline Personnel Security Standard (BPSS)

Asset protection

• Knowledge of data storage and processing locations: Yes
• Data storage and processing locations: United Kingdom
• User control over data storage and processing locations: Yes
• Datacentre security standards: Complies with a recognised standard (for example CSA CCM version 3.0)
• Penetration testing frequency: At least once a year
• Penetration testing approach: ‘IT Health Check’ performed by a CHECK service provider
• Protecting data at rest:
  • Physical access control, complying with another standard
  • Encryption of all physical media
  • Scale, obfuscating techniques, or data storage sharding
• Data sanitisation process: Yes
• Data sanitisation type:
  • Explicit overwriting of storage before reallocation
  • Hardware containing data is completely destroyed
• Equipment disposal approach: Complying with a recognised standard, for example CSA CCM v.30, CAS (Sanitisation) or ISO/IEC 27001

Backup and recovery

• Backup and recovery: Yes
• What’s backed up:
  • Backups: Fully managed, 10 to 240 Bootable Images, On-Demand Sandbox
  • Backups: Faster Server Recovery, File-Level Recovery, Near-Continuous Data Protection
  • DRaaS: Fully managed, Realtime Live Replication, 1 Hour Recovery SLA
  • DRaaS: Protect entire solution or only key servers
  • DRaaS: No loss of Data or orders
  • DRaaS: 100% Transparent service, 100% Guaranteed recovery
• Backup controls: Faster Server Recovery: User can restore your entire server in minutes by booting it directly from the backup itself. This ground-breaking technology eliminates the need to extract the backup and copy it to production storage, providing faster recovery times.; Daily or hourly backups: User can choose from daily or hourly backups to protect their data, with a 10 day retention of files. Daily backups are taken overnight, whilst hourly backups provide 240 bootable images.
• Datacentre setup: Multiple datacentres with disaster recovery
• Scheduling backups: Users contact the support team to schedule backups
• Backup recovery:
  • Users can recover backups themselves, for example through a web interface
  • Users contact the support team

Data-in-transit protection

• Data protection between buyer and supplier networks:
  • TLS (version 1.2 or above)
  • IPsec or TLS VPN gateway
  • Other
• Other protection between networks: All buyer's that utilize dedicated networks have their own managed FireWall (with the ability to set dedicated VPN in order to access LAN infrastructure if in place) which strictly controls access to their infrastructure. This gives the ability of full infrastructure isolation and control access on port and protocol level (Whitelists, access by port and protocol etc).
• Data protection within supplier network:
  • TLS (version 1.2 or above)
  • IPsec or TLS VPN gateway

Availability and resilience

• Guaranteed availability: Network availability - 100% Infrastructure availability - 99.99% Availability is based on the total number of operating hours of a given calendar month and excludes planned and emergency maintenance. Service credits of up to 25% of the standard monthly support fee are payable for any month where the availability SLA is not met.
• Approach to resilience: Information included in FirstServ Physical and environmental security policy and it's available on request.
• Outage reporting: A public status page is available on the MyFirstServ website, which shows live status of our core network and infrastructure along with details of any incidents. Customer notifications are managed via our ticketing system accessible via MyFirstServ.

Identity and authentication

• User authentication:
  • 2-factor authentication
  • Public key authentication (including by TLS client certificate)
  • Dedicated link (for example VPN)
  • Username or password
• Access restrictions in management interfaces and support channels: The creation of new user accounts and the on-going management of system access are fundamental to the provision of effective information security. This process describes how user account and access rights should be requested, approved, created, amended, reviewed and removed in a secure way which complies with FirstServ policies.; This control applies to all systems, people and processes that constitute the organisation’s information systems, including board members, directors, employees, suppliers and other third parties who have access to FirstServ systems.; The following policies and procedures are relevant to Access Management Process:; -Access Control Policy ; -Mobile Device Security Policy; -Teleworking Policy
• Access restriction testing frequency: At least every 6 months
• Management access authentication:
  • 2-factor authentication
  • Public key authentication (including by TLS client certificate)
  • Dedicated link (for example VPN)
  • Username or password
• Devices users manage the service through:
  • Dedicated device on a segregated network (providers own provision)
  • Dedicated device over multiple services or networks
  • Directly from any device which may also be used for normal business (for example web browsing or viewing external email)

Audit information for users

• Access to user activity audit information: Users contact the support team to get audit information
• How long user audit data is stored for: Between 6 months and 12 months
• Access to supplier activity audit information: Users contact the support team to get audit information
• How long supplier audit data is stored for: Between 6 months and 12 months
• How long system logs are stored for: Between 1 month and 6 months

Standards and certifications

• ISO/IEC 27001 certification: Yes
• Who accredited the ISO/IEC 27001: Centre for Assessment
• ISO/IEC 27001 accreditation date: 18/01/2021
• What the ISO/IEC 27001 doesn’t cover: All processes are covered
• ISO 28000:2007 certification: No
• CSA STAR certification: No
• PCI certification: Yes
• Who accredited the PCI DSS certification: FIS Global
• PCI DSS accreditation date: 17/03/2022
• What the PCI DSS doesn’t cover: N/A
• Cyber essentials: No
• Cyber essentials plus: No
• Other security certifications: No

Security governance

• Named board-level person responsible for service security: Yes
• Security governance certified: Yes
• Security governance standards: ISO/IEC 27001
• Information security policies and processes: An ISO27001-compliant information security management system is operational

Operational security

• Configuration and change management standard: Conforms to a recognised standard, for example CSA CCM v3.0 or SSAE-16 / ISAE 3402
• Configuration and change management approach: Change management system operational which documents all changes, responsible parties, time of change and senior-level sign off. All changes pass through a Change Advisory Board (CAB).
• Vulnerability management type: Conforms to a recognised standard, for example CSA CCM v3.0 or SSAE-16 / ISAE 3402
• Vulnerability management approach: Vulnerability scan run once per month and critical vulnerabilities patched within 7 days. Additional vulnerability scan run after any significant change implementation.
• Protective monitoring type: Supplier-defined controls
• Protective monitoring approach: Internally designed and developed threat monitoring system is run on all infrastructure.
• Incident management type: Conforms to a recognised standard, for example, CSA CCM v3.0 or ISO/IEC 27035:2011 or SSAE-16 / ISAE 3402
• Incident management approach: ISO27001-complaint processes and systems for incident response are operational.

Secure development

• Approach to secure software development best practice: Conforms to a recognised standard, but self-assessed

Separation between users

• Virtualisation technology used to keep applications and users sharing the same infrastructure apart: Yes
• Who implements virtualisation: Supplier
• Virtualisation technologies used: VMware
• How shared infrastructure is kept separate: VMware Infrastructure is a full data center infrastructure virtualization suite that provides comprehensive virtualization, management, resource optimization, application availability and operational automation capabilities in a fully integrated offering. VMware Infrastructure virtualizes the entire IT infrastructure, including servers, storage and networks and aggregates these heterogeneous resources into a simple and uniform set of computing resources in the virtual environment. With VMware Infrastructure, IT organizations can manage resources as a shared utility and dynamically provision them to different business units and projects without worrying about the underlying hardware differences and limitations.

Energy efficiency

• Energy-efficient datacentres: Yes
• Description of energy efficient datacentres: FirstServ's Green Hosting has several components, including energy reduction, renewable energy sources, carbon offsets and recycling.; Our datacenters provider accepted to be part of the 2016 EU Code of Conduct for Energy Efficiency in Data Centres. We worked with IT sustainability consultancy Carbon3IT to review all of their UK data centres for energy efficiency best practices and their alignment with the EU Code of Conduct. The review revealed that their data centres were already functioning in line with these standards.

Social Value

• Fighting climate change:

  Fighting climate change

  Firstserv takes its responsibilities towards the environment seriously, and we are committed to reducing our carbon footprint. We are pursuing green hosting policies, which in turn helps our customers to be greener themselves. Firstserv's Green Hosting has several components, including energy reduction, renewable energy sources, carbon offsets and recycling.
• Equal opportunity:

  Equal opportunity

  At FirstServ we believe in encouraging and fostering Equal Opportunities and Diversity to ensure that all job applicants, employees, suppliers and clients of the Company receive equal treatment regardless of race, colour, age, ethnic or national origins, religious beliefs, sex, trans-gender, sexual orientation, marital status, civil partnership status and disability. We also want to ensure that equality and diversity is integral to all our activities taking into account every stage of our work.

Pricing

• Price: £99.00 to £699.00 a server a month
• Discount for educational organisations: Yes
• Free trial available: Yes
• Description of free trial: Free trials are available to both new and existing customers for products that haven't previously purchased or trialed. Free trials are excluded from any SLA credits and are limited to 30 days’ based on a fair usage policy.

Service documents

• Pricing document

  PDF

• Service definition document

  PDF

• Terms and conditions

  PDF

Request an accessible format

If you use assistive technology (such as a screen reader) and need versions of these documents in a more accessible format, email the supplier at seb@firstserv.com. Tell them what format you need. It will help if you say what assistive technology you use.