Work-books Overview
Work-books is a cloud application platform used by business of all sizes. Our platform allows organizations to focus on day to day running and business strategy while Work-books focuses on tool development, process development, infrastructure management, scaling, and security. Work-books and our partners apply security best practices and manages platform security so customers can focus on their business. Our platform is designed to protect customers from threats by applying security controls at every layer from physical to application, and have an ability to rapidly deploy security updates without customer interaction or service interruption.
Work-books is a thing of trust
Transparency and accountability nurture trust.
Trust is a core principle of Work-books and our partners. It’s this commitment to customer security and inspiring your trust that directs the decisions we make on a daily basis. Trust is the responsibility of every team member and one we do not take lightly. We as entrepreneurs and business persons understand the value of the things you ask us to hold for you.
Security Assessments and Compliance
Data Centers
Work-books’s utilizes Amazon’s secure data centers, Googles AI and api and also utilize the Amazon Web Service (AWS) technology. Amazon and Google continually manages risk and undergoes recurring assessments to ensure compliance with industry standards. Amazon’s data center operations have been accredited under:
- ISO 27001
- SOC 1 and SOC 2/SSAE 16/ISAE 3402 (Previously SAS 70 Type II)
- PCI Level 1
- FISMA Moderate
- Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX)
PCI
Our processors use PCI compliant payment processor Braintree for encrypting and processing credit card payments. Work-books’s infrastructure provider is PCI Level 1 compliant.
Penetration Testing and Vulnerability Assessments
Third party security testing of the Work-books application is performed by independent and reputable security consulting firms through a 3rd party. Findings from each assessment are reviewed with the assessors, risk ranked, and assigned to the responsible teams.
Physical Security
Work-books utilizes ISO 27001 and FISMA certified data centers managed by Amazon. Amazon has many years of experience in designing, constructing, and operating large-scale data centers. This experience has been applied to the AWS platform and infrastructure. AWS data centers are housed in nondescript facilities, and critical facilities have extensive setback and military grade perimeter control berms as well as other natural boundary protection. Physical access is strictly controlled both at the perimeter and at building ingress points by professional security staff utilizing video surveillance, state-of-the-art intrusion detection systems, and other electronic means. Authorized staff must pass two-factor authentication no fewer than three times to access data center floors. All visitors and contractors are required to present identification and are signed in and continually escorted by authorized staff.
Amazon only provides data center access and information to employees who have a legitimate business need for such privileges. When an employee no longer has a business need for these privileges, his or her access is immediately revoked, even if they continue to be an employee of Amazon or Amazon Web Services. All physical and electronic access to data centers by Amazon employees is logged and audited routinely.
For additional information see: https://aws.amazon.com/security
Environmental Safeguards
Fire Detection and Suppression
Automatic fire detection and suppression equipment has been installed to reduce risk. The fire detection system utilizes smoke detection sensors in all data centre environments, mechanical and electrical infrastructure spaces, chiller rooms and generator equipment rooms. These areas are protected by either wet-pipe, double-interlocked pre-action, or gaseous sprinkler systems.
Power
The data center electrical power systems are designed to be fully redundant and maintainable without impact to operations, 24 hours a day, and seven days a week. Uninterruptible Power Supply (UPS) units provide back-up power in the event of an electrical failure for critical and essential loads in the facility. Data centers use generators to provide backup power for the entire facility.
Climate and Temperature Control
Climate control is required to maintain a constant operating temperature for servers and other hardware, which prevents overheating and reduces the possibility of service outages. Data centers are conditioned to maintain atmospheric conditions at optimal levels. Monitoring systems and data center personnel ensure temperature and humidity are at the appropriate levels.
Management
Data center staff monitor electrical, mechanical and life support systems and equipment so issues are immediately identified. Preventative maintenance is performed to maintain the continued operability of equipment.
For additional information see: https://aws.amazon.com/security
Network Security
Firewalls
Firewalls are utilized to restrict access to systems from external networks and between systems internally. By default, all access is denied and only explicitly allowed ports and protocols are allowed based on business need. Each system is assigned to a firewall security group based on the system’s function. Security groups restrict access to only the ports and protocols required for a system’s specific function to mitigate risk.
Host-based firewalls restrict customer applications from establishing localhost connections over the loopback network interface to further isolate customer applications. Host-based firewalls also provide the ability to further limit inbound and outbound connections as needed.
DDoS Mitigation
Our partners infrastructure provides DDoS mitigation techniques including TCP Syn cookies and connection rate limiting in addition to maintaining multiple backbone connections and internal bandwidth capacity that exceeds the Internet carrier supplied bandwidth. We work closely with our providers to quickly respond to events and enable advanced DDoS mitigation controls when needed.
Spoofing and Sniffing Protections
Managed firewalls prevent IP, MAC, and ARP spoofing on the network and between virtual hosts to ensure spoofing is not possible. Packet sniffing is prevented by infrastructure including the hypervisor which will not deliver traffic to an interface which it is not addressed to. Work-books utilizes application isolation, operating system restrictions, and encrypted connections to further ensure risk is mitigated at all levels.
Port Scanning
Port scanning is prohibited and every reported instance is investigated by our infrastructure provider. When port scans are detected, they are stopped and access is blocked.
Data Security
Work-books Postgres
Customer data is stored in separate access-controlled databases per application. Each database requires a unique username and password that is only valid for that specific database and is unique to a single application. Customers with multiple applications and databases are assigned separate databases and accounts per application to mitigate the risk of unauthorized access between applications.
Customer connections to postgres databases require SSL encryption to ensure a high level of security and privacy. When deploying applications, we encourage customers to take advantage of encrypted database connections.
Stored data can is encrypted in order to meet data security requirements. We implement data storage, key management, and data retention requirements when developing our application.
System Security
System Configuration
System configuration and consistency is maintained through standard, up-to-date images, configuration management software, and by replacing systems with updated deployments. Systems are deployed using up-to-date images that are updated with configuration changes and security updates before deployment. Once deployed, existing systems are decommissioned and replaced with up-to-date systems.
Customer Application Isolation
The Work-books platform run within its own isolated environment and cannot interact with other applications or areas of the AWS system to prevent security and stability issues. These self-contained environments isolate processes, memory, and the file system while host-based firewalls restrict applications from establishing local network connections.
System Authentication
Operating system access is limited to Work-books staff and requires username and key authentication. Operating systems do not allow password authentication to prevent password brute force attacks, theft, and sharing.
Vulnerability Management
Our and our partners vulnerability management process is designed to remediate risks without customer interaction or impact. Work-books is notified of vulnerabilities through internal and external assessments, system patch monitoring, and third party mailing lists and services. Each vulnerability is reviewed to determine if it is applicable to Work-books’s environment, ranked based on risk, and assigned to the appropriate team for resolution.
New systems are deployed with the latest updates, security fixes, and Work-books configurations and existing systems are decommissioned as the platform evolves. This process allows Work-books to keep the environment up-to-date. Since our applications run in isolated environments, they are unaffected by these core system updates.
To further mitigate risk, each component type is assigned to a unique network security group. These security groups are designed to only allow access to the ports and protocols required for the specific component type. For example, an isolated dyno running orders or the PBX are denied access to the Work-books management infrastructure as each is within its own network security group and access is not allowed between the two.
Work-books Application Security
We and our partners undergo penetration tests, vulnerability assessments, and source code reviews to assess the security of our application, architecture, and implementation. Our third party security assessments cover all areas of our platform including testing for OWASP Top 10 web application vulnerabilities and customer application isolation. Work-books partners work closely with external security assessors to review the security of the Work-books platform and applications and apply best practices.
Issues found in Work-books applications are risk ranked, prioritized, assigned to the responsible team for remediation, and Work-books’s security team reviews each remediation plan to ensure proper resolution.
Backups
Customer Applications
The Work-books platform is automatically backed up as part of the deployment process on secure, access controlled, and redundant storage. We use these backups to deploy your application across our platform and to automatically bring your application back online in the event of an outage.
Postgres Databases
Continuous Protection keeps data safe on Work-books Postgres. Every change to your data is written to write-ahead logs, which are shipped to multi-datacenter, high-durability storage. In the unlikely event of unrecoverable hardware failure, these logs can be automatically ‘replayed’ to recover the database to within seconds of its last known state. We also provide you with the ability to back up your data to meet your own backup and data retention requirements.
Customer Configuration and Meta-information
Your configuration and meta-information is backed up every minute to the same high-durability, redundant infrastructure used to store your database information. These frequent backups allow capturing changes made to the running configuration added after the initial sign on.
Work-books Platform
From our instance images to our databases, each component is backed up to secure, access-controlled, and redundant storage. Our platform allows for recovering data to within seconds of the last known state, restoring system instances from standard templates, and deploying customer configurations and data. In addition to standard backup practices, Work-books’s infrastructure is designed to scale and be fault tolerant by automatically replacing failed instances and reducing the likelihood of needing to restore from backup.
Disaster Recovery
Customer Data
Our platform automatically restores customer data and the many Work-books Postgres databases in the case of an outage. The Work-books platform is designed to dynamically deploy within the cloud, monitor for failures, and recover failed platform components including customer settings and data.
Work-books Platform
The Work-books platform is designed for stability, scaling, and inherently mitigates common issues that lead to outages while maintaining recovery capabilities. Our platform maintains redundancy to prevent single points of failure, is able to replace failed components, and utilizes multiple data centers designed for resiliency. In the case of an outage, the platform is deployed across multiple data centers using current system images and data is restored from backups. Work-books reviews platform issues to understand the root cause, impact to customers, and improve the platform and processes.
Customer Data Retention and Destruction
You have the freedom to define what data our application store and the ability to purge data from your database to comply with your data retention requirements. If you de-provision a company and the associated data, we maintain the database’s storage volume until a time when its automatically destroyed rendering the data unrecoverable.
Privacy
Work-books has a published privacy policy that clearly defines what data is collected and how it is used. Work-books are committed to customer security and transparency.
We take steps to protect the security of our customers and protect data stored within the platform. Some of the protections inherent to Work-books’s products include authentication, access controls, data transport encryption, HTTPS support for customers, and encrypt stored data.
Access to Customer Data
Work-books staff does not access or interact with customer data or applications as part of normal operations. There may be cases where Work-books is requested to interact with customer data or applications at the request of the customer for support purposes or where required by law. Customer data is access controlled and all access by Work-books staff is accompanied by customer approval or government mandate, reason for access, actions taken by staff, and support start and end time.
Employee Screening and Policies
As a condition of employment all Work-books employees undergo pre-employment background checks and agree to company policies including security and acceptable use policies.
Customer Security Best Practices
Encrypt Data in Transit
Enable HTTPS for applications and SSL database connections to protect sensitive data transmitted to and from clients.
Encrypt Sensitive Data at Rest
Customers data is encrypted in stored files and data within databases to meet their data security requirements. Data encryption is deployed using industry standard encryption and the best practices.
Authentication
To prevent unauthorized account access use a strong passphrase for both your Work-books user account and prevent disclosure, replace keys if lost or disclosed, and use Work-books’s shared ledger model to invite contributors rather than sharing user accounts.
Logging
Logging is critical for troubleshooting and investigating issues. We use three main options for interacting with your system, application, and API logs.
Use of Third-Party Solutions
In developing your business on Work-books you may choose to use third party services for added functionality. Be mindful of the data shared with these providers and their security practices just as you would be with Work-books.
Changes to the policy
This policy was published on 01/04/2020 and last updated on 29/04/2020.
We may change this privacy policy from time to time. You should check this policy occasionally to ensure you are aware of the most recent version that will apply each time you access this website. We will also attempt to notify users of any changes by:
By notice on our website.
Directly by email if opted in.
Steven Moffat April 2020