SECURITY
We value your trust, and we understand that handling your information with care is our most important responsibility. So, only those who provide the products or services you might need are authorized to have access to your information.
Our Security Policy: We operate under a detailed, rigorous information security policy designed to protect the security and confidentiality of your information. The Information Security Program is subject to ongoing regulatory oversight and examination.

HOW DOES BROWSER SECURITY WORK?
Recent versions of most internet browsers support the encrypted transmission of on-line documents and the data you enter on a web page. This means that instead of sending readable text, both your browser and the website's secure server encode all text using a security key. That way, personal data sent to your browser or data you send back would be extremely difficult to decode in the unlikely event it was intercepted by an unauthorized party. The key used for encoding is a random number that is unique to your session at the secure website.
There are two grades of internet security: International-grade encryption uses a 40-bit random number negotiated between your browser and the web-server. This means that only one out of about 1,000,000,000,000 possible decoding keys can be used to decipher your data. Domestic-grade encryption uses a 128-bit key, so that the number of possible keys is vastly larger. This site uses the highest grade of encryption supported by your browser and your internet connection.

HOW DO I KNOW IF SECURITY IS OPERATING?
Your internet session is encrypted if your security-enabled browser is connected to a website using the Secure Hypertext Transport Protocol. URL strings beginning with "HTTPS://" instead of the usual "HTTP://" indicate that the secure protocol is in effect. Your browser may also tell you if security is operating. For example, Mozilla's Firefox will display the icon in the lower right corner of your screen in secure mode. Microsoft Internet Explorer shows an icon or the address bar may be a different color. Note that security may be operating without any visible indication if the web page you are viewing employs frames (see below).
If secure transmission is not in effect or only part of a frame-based page is secure, Firefox shows the "red-slashed lock" icon, and Explorer does not show the “lock” icon.
Most browsers can be set to give you a pop-up announcement when you enter or leave a secure web page. In Firefox, these settings are on the Security section when you select "Options" on the Tools menu. In IE, the setting is on the "Advanced" tab when you select "Options" on the View menu.

SECURE MODE AND FRAME-BASED WEB PAGES
Security may be operating without displaying any security icons (or Firefox may show the "red-slashed lock" icon) if only part of a frame-based page is employing security. You can verify the security of a page within a frame by opening it in a new browser window. Both IE and Firefox allow you to open a link in a new window by right-clicking on the link and selecting that option from the pop-up context menu. When a secure page is open in its own window, instead of being viewed within a frame, you can then see the security icons provided by your browser as well as the "https://" secure protocol prefix in the URL string.