Cordys Process Factory (CPF) is a cloud-based platform for developing and running applications online. By far the most common, a very important and usually the first question any customer asks before putting their data on the cloud is the security of their data. Needless to say, data is the centre-piece for any business and protecting the data from all unwanted interference is a crucial aspect of every organization. The security of the data can never be over-emphasized.
Cordys understands the importance of customer's data security and goes a long way in ensuring that data is completely secure in all aspects. The architecture and design of the Cordys platform incorporates security as a design goal itself instead of viewing security as an add-on to the platform. So each and every piece of the Cordys platform as well as Cordys Process Factory is developed with the highest levels of data security from the ground-up.
A comprehensive security policy should incorporate security in several aspects including platform level security and data centre security. In this blog, we shall see the security features of CPF which all CPF customers will benefit from.

Platform Security

A large part of the security in CPF is driven by the Cordys Platform itself. The following are the security features provided by the platform and CPF.

Authentication

CPF follows an 'entry-point' authentication. The user is authenticated with a username/password at the entry point of the application (web gateway) itself. Only on successful authentication will the user be given access to the rest of the application.
Standards based security tokens are allocated during a successfully login, and the security tokens are verified during each and every subsequent request to the server.
So an unauthorized user can never gain entry to the 'inside' of the system.

Password Security
Users login with user name/password. Password is encrypted using SHA1 algorithm, which is a high-end and established algorithm designed by 'US National Security Agency' and stored on the LDAP.
The LDAP component is also run on Secure Socket Layer (SSL) and is accessible only for appropriate admin access controlled by the system. So, other than the specific platform components, it is impossible for any other user/component to access the LDAP.This ensures the passwords are completely secured.

Authorization
CPF follows Role based authorization. Users are allocated roles and roles are linked to "privileges". Only users with appropriate level of privileges can do the necessary actions.
Privileges can be set at several levels including Applications, Functionalities, Forms, Reports, Table (Application Object), Record Level, Application Object read, insert, update & delete, etc. Only users with sufficient privileges can access and change the privilege settings.
This ensures that users can always do only what they have been "permitted" to do in the application. Any other action that the user does will be blocked by the system.

Tenant Separation
Tenant data separation is done throughout the application in design time as well as runtime.
This ensures that each "tenant" works in their "own space" and the data of one tenant will never be accessible by any other tenant in any way.

SSL Support
A complete support for SSL (HTTPS) to ensure that all communications between the customer's browser and the CPF server are encrypted, secure and tamper proof.

Auditing
Auditing can be enabled on any Application Object (table). For audit-enabled tables, all changes done on that table gets logged.
This helps the user to track anytime the modifications that were done to any record, which user did the modifications and time of modification.

Sand-boxing
Only the "white-list" of web services is allowed for the user. The rest of the services are blocked.
So a user can only execute the permitted list of web-services.

DoS Attack Prevention
The maximum SOAP request size as well as the maximum number of request made within a specified duration can be set on a per-user basis.
This ensures that if the system detects a likely Denial Of Service (DoS) attack scenario from an IP or user, the user or IP gets blocked.

Dynamic IP Black-listing
The system automatically determines users who are misusing the system based on the user credentials or IP, and blocks them for a limited or unlimited duration.

ISV Application Verification
All applications that are built by ISVs which are made available in the CPF Marketplace are verified by Cordys for Security, Functional, Technical and Legal aspects.

Data Centre Security

The CPF cloud that customers' access is hosted in data centers. This means that the customer data gets stored in these 'remote' data centers instead on being stored in customer's on-premise machines which is the case for on-premise installed applications. This is one of the factors that alarm most customers as since they don't "see" or "control" the physical data, customers are concerned about data falling into wrong hands.
CPF Cloud hosting is done on professional and leading data centers which have very high levels of security, follows best practices (ISO 17799) and gets continuously audited (SAS70 Type II).
The datacenter security is classified and handled in 3 critical security areas – Physical Security, System Security and Operational Security.

Physical Security
Data center access limited to data center technicians.
Biometric scanning for controlled data center access.
Security camera monitoring at all data center locations.
24x7 onsite staff provides additional protection against unauthorized entry.
Unmarked facilities to help maintain low profile.
Physical security audited by an independent firm.

System Security

System installation using hardened, patched OS.
System patching configured by the data center to provide ongoing protection from exploits.
Dedicated firewall and VPN services to help block unauthorized system access.
Data protection with Data Center managed backup solutions.
Optional, dedicated intrusion detection devices to provide an additional layer of protection against unauthorized system access.
Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) mitigation services.
Risk assessment and security consultation by the data center's professional services teams.

Operational Security

ISO17799-based policies and procedures, regularly reviewed as part of our SAS70 Type II audit process.
All employees trained on documented information security and privacy procedures.
Access to confidential information restricted to authorized personnel only, according to documented processes.
Systems access logged and tracked for auditing purposes.
Secure document-destruction policies for all sensitive information.
Fully documented change-management procedures.
Independently audited disaster recovery and business continuity plans in place for the data center's headquarters and support services.

High Availability, Backups and Security Tracking

The CPF cloud is configured to run in a fail-safe, High-Available mode with no single point of failures and sufficient redundancy for networks, power supply, data disks, hardware servers, databases, etc. The data is backed everyday on tapes and stored securely.

Conclusion

The holistic and "no compromise" approach taken by Cordys in addressing security in all aspects including in the platform, CPF and in the data centers is in total reorganization of the importance of data security in the clouds for the customer. From the above mentioned features, it can be realized that the CPF customer data is as safe on the clouds as it can be on the best managed on-premise applications. What's more, the level of data security is so high that it is usually more secure than what several applications/organizations can provide for the on-premise applications.