Frequently Asked Questions

Here are some questions we get asked regularly, if you can't find the answer you're looking for please get in touch.

How secure is Big Sofa?
Working with large corporate clients and government organisations, we take security very seriously. We schedule regular penetration testing and ensure any issues that are flagged are addressed. We are also ISO27001 accredited, which means we have a range of policies to ensure data is secure and backed up appropriately. Please get in touch for further details on these policies.
How do we ensure your security is maintained over time?
Under ISO27001 we have various policies in place and they are continuously reviewed. With regard to systems we ensure we update all software and technology to all latest versions and have an awareness to vulnerabilities so we can address them as they occur. We are also committed to a rigorous system of PEN testing.
Storage
The platform uses Amazon’s S3 storage. The Amazon S3 platform allows users to download files directly from S3 via expiring signed URLs, and provides encrypted data at rest. Both the transcoding and transcription partners work directly with Amazon’s S3 storage.
What levels of data encryption and transfer do you comply with?
On AWS data is encrypted at rest using AES 256 CBC, data is transferred via HTTPS using TSL 1.0 or greater.
What devices are supported?
You can access the Big Sofa from any device, including mobiles and tablets.
What browser support do you offer?
Our platform runs on all the major browsers. Our support ranges from IE9 onwards, to Chrome and Safari webkit browsers, and also includes Firefox browsers.
Release Management - When do you deploy new features?
Our deploys last less than 10 minutes, and we deploy new features out of normal working hours GMT. We notify all clients of downtime taking place in office hours at least 24 hours before it takes place.
What other languages do you support?
We’re multilingual, transcripts can be translated in any language, we also offer a subtitling function on downloaded content.
What video formats do you accept?
We accept the majority of video formats including .mov, .mp4, .mpeg
Scalability
Because we use cloud services we can expand as much and as quickly as needed. We can support large numbers of users and huge volumes of content and have many clients who are large multi-national organisations. We offer Virtualisation and Load Balancing to manage high volumes and flexibly expand to cope with demand. Our data is managed and stored and has been assessed for risk to business continuity. We have several measures in place for data recovery, disaster recovery and back-ups.
Client Isolation
Your data will be completely segmented from other clients and never exists in the same place – our penetration testing covers privilege escalation to ensure there are no compromises. We also comply with the Data Protection Act to ensure your data is kept properly.
Transcription
Your video is transcribed automatically and then checked for quality by human beings, as we know sometimes the machine doesn’t always get it right. This makes sure searching via transcript leads you to the content you need. Saying this though we’re always on the look-out for new transcription technology, it’s just not good enough for us yet.
Big Sofa API Option

Big Sofa is currently in the process of developing APIs for integration with external applications, and if you have a company you work with which you’d like us to integrate with we’re pretty sure this is a possibility.

We also offer a number of authentication options for SSO (Single/Simplified Sign On):

  • O Auth
  • Microsoft Sharepoint integration
  • Microsoft Active Directory integration
How will new functionality be released to clients?
Functionality will be released when ready for deploy. We will send an update e-mail to your users so they understand what the changes are, what it means to them and how they can take advantage of new features.
Who does the content belong to?
Data belongs to the client. Usually liability lies with the client to ensure that data is collected and stored correctly but we will ensure when data is within our systems that it complies to agreed standards.
How do I get my video on Big Sofa?

If you are conducting live projects - our upload process is simple and intuitive and you can easily upload content yourself through the platform. We can also integrate into mobile surveys as well ensuring the responses and accompanying video are loaded directly onto our platform.

Alternatively if you’re uploading historic content we can help with this too. We understand that it can be complicated to hunt down and recognise that whilst you know you have lots of video - you may not always know where it’s kept. We’re experts at talking to your agencies, I.T departments and can build you a bespoke system to transfer data from your server to ours.