Overview

 Reliability

 Information Security

 Integration

Technology Overview

MyDropBox offers the most comprehensive source search on the Internet, utilizing innovative artificial intelligence module that actually comprehends the content of each processed document. MyDropBox easily bypasses its competitors that are only able to find matches between blocks of text copied word-for-word. At MyDropBox we know that when plagiarism occurs it is not likely to be word for word copying, but rather careful editing of a document.

The first step in our detection process is checking a student-submitted document against the current index of the Internet. In only 12 to 20 hours every document is checked against over 4.8 billion documents from our own and outsourced snapshots of the Internet. Our competitors rely on private databases that are rarely updated, creating many holes in their detection systems. MyDropBox provides you with both thoroughness and speed in its less-than-a-day time frame. At MyDropBox, each document undergoes a complicated series of matches that are not technologically feasible in a shorter time period.

The second step of the plagiarism detection process is analysis of published works in password-protected electronic document databases. MyDropBox also scours newspapers, magazines, term paper mills, electronic books, and online reference sites for potential sources of plagiarized text. We continually update our databases to keep up with all the new materials being published.

Searching our customers’ own databases of papers is the third step in our comprehensive plagiarism detection process. Every student-submitted paper is thoroughly matched against his or her institution’s database to prevent peer-to-peer cheating. Uploaded papers are not matched against other institutions’ databases, so your institution’s privacy is ensured. We prevent internal plagiarism from peers within your institution while also protecting your privacy using a separate document archive for every institutional customer. MyDropBox can also be connected to your institution’s digital libraries and archives for even more thorough plagiarism detection.

Reliability

MyDropBox places high emphasis on reliability of service. Our high-availability system architecture allows us to ensure uptime ratings of over 99%. We have two datacenters co-located with CI-Host Inc. in two different geographical locations (Dallas, TX and Chicago, IL) to ensure uninterrupted service even in case of network connectivity problems in one of the regions. Such scheme also allows us to do maintenance without interrupting the service, and mirroring data on two geographically separated datacenters ensures zero risk of data loss. Also, we have a 24/7 support contract with Dell guaranteeing us a Dell engineer on site within 4 hours in case we have any problems with our equipment.

Also, our system is perfectly scalable – if we need extra throughput, we just add another server to each of the clusters. Generally, we keep the load of our servers at 30-35% of their capacity.

Information Security

With MyDropBox's high-level security features, information is secure as long as users keep their passwords strong enough (not easy to guess). From the technical standpoint, our servers are configured in such a way that only select people can access servers for maintenance over encrypted connections or physically, escorted by a datacenter employee. Users access the system via non-encrypted connections for better compatibility. We believe it is not a threat, but we can configure encrypted connection access per user request. Access to user information and submitted documents is restricted by the system. Currently we have the following access policies:

• Account administrator can access all documents and user information within his/her institution.
• Instructors can access all submitted documents within their institution (can be restricted by the Account Administrator) and only their own user information.
• Students can access only the papers that they submitted and papers from which they plagiarized but only within the limits of their institution.

Integration

A unique feature of MyDropBox service is the level of integration that we offer to our customers. Our technology team is ready to integrate MyDropBox service into your institutional portal or learning management system. For example, our partnership with Blackboard allows us to offer built-in plagiarism solutions (SafeAssignment.com) to all users of Blackboard Learning System. Experience of our developers ensures fast implementation and high quality of our integration solutions.