Once your Escrow Agreement is established and the parties agree to the contents that will make up the “Deposit Materials”, the next step is to deliver the “Deposit Materials” to the Escrow Agent.

National Software Escrow, Inc. (NSE) supports both “Physical” and “Electronic” Escrow Deposits.

Electronic Delivery” means deposit by electronic transfer such as electronic mail (email), File Transfer Protocol (FTP), or any other electronic transfer that communicates data from one storage location to another storage location. Formats for Electronic Delivery include any file format that can be stored on a computer-readable medium.

Physical Delivery” means deposit by any non-electronic delivery manner such as, courier, courier service, postal service, mail service, hand-delivery, or any physical delivery in which data stored on tangible medium exchanges possession from one entity to another entity. Formats for a Physical Delivery can be optical disc storage (CD-ROM, Compact Disc, (CD), Digital Video Disc (DVD), etc.), removable storage, hard drive, portable storage, memory card, memory stick, or any other tangible computer-readable medium.

The type of delivery/format (Physical vs. Electronic) should be negotiated & agreed upon by both the Technology Vendor and Licensee. In the event of a release event, NSE will deliver the “Deposit Materials” to the Licensee in the same medium as delivered to NSE and by the same delivery method (Physical Delivery or Electronic Delivery) originally sent to NSE.

Upon receipt of the “Deposit Materials”, NSE will issue to the parties a receipt for the initial “Deposit Materials” and for each subsequent deposit. Such receipt will verify a delivery to NSE, but not a verification of the contents of the initial “Deposit Materials” and/or for each subsequent deposit.

Physical Storage

The “Deposit Materials” provided to NSE by Physical Delivery will be stored, maintained, secured and preserved in a secure and climatized storage facility containing:

  • Certified halon fire suppression system
  • Computer-controlled humidity and temperature levels
  • Vault and building monitored by 24-hour surveillance and security systems
  • Key punch access restricting access throughout the vault
  • Air filtration system

Electronic Storage

The “Deposit Materials” provided to NSE by Electronic Delivery will be stored, maintained, secured and preserved having:

  • File encryption using applicable and appropriate standards. Encryption for storage should be applied after files are uploaded.
  • Data storage over several large-scale data centers throughout the world.
  • Protection against network security issues, e.g., Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks, Man in the Middle (IMITM) attacks, and packet sniffing.
  • Redundant backups for data over multiple locations.

When is the Source Code Released?

A Source code escrow agreement’s purpose is to provide a licensee with access to a software vendor’s source code when an agreed-upon event occurs such as the software vendor going out of business. These are called the release conditions. The vendor deposits the software source code with an agent of an escrow account, who will then store the file(s) in a secure location, either offline or in-house in a secured cloud environment.

The escrow agent will release the deposited material to the beneficiary, or end user, if specific pre-defined requirements are satisfied, called release conditions.

National Software Escrow has the facility, safeguards, and legal structure to provide a secure, cost-effective escrow arrangement that provides the data protection both parties in a software escrow agreement require. There is no other data escrow company that can offer a completely customizable software escrow service at a better value than us.

Learn more about the release of the deposit materials and software escrow agreements.