We prioritize our users’ and respondents’ security and privacy concerns. We strive to ensure that data is processed and stored securely. As standard practice, we advise clients, when in a position to do so, to collect only as much personal data as is required to provide their services in an efficient and effective manner. With this in mind, we use above industry-standards to securely store and process data.
This Security Statement aims at being transparent about our security infrastructure to help reassure you that the data we process is appropriately and securely protected on your behalf, and for European clients, in full compliance with GDPR.
SSL/TLS Encryption: Users can determine whether to collect survey responses over secured, encrypted SSL/TLS connections. All communications with the Qualia servers are encrypted using SSL/TLS. Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) and Transport Layer Security (TLS) technology (the successor technology to SSL) protects communications by using both server authentication and data encryption. This ensures that user data in transit is safe, secure, and available only to intended recipients.
User Authentication: User data in our database is logically segregated by multiple account-based access rules. Users can only access surveys that are associated with their organization. User passwords are hashed using BCrypt cipher and stored in our secure database and must be entered each time the user logs on. Qualia issues an encrypted session cookie after the user is successfully authenticated only identify the user in the system for the duration of a specific session. The session cookie stores encrypted user information, protected by 256 bit AES encryption and cannot be deciphered or modified.
User Passwords: Each User Account needs a unique email address and an associated password. Passwords are randomly salted and hashed using industry standard BCrypt hashing function which is based on Blowfish cipher. Therefore, each hashed password is unique, cannot be deciphered or brute-forced. We enforce users to use strong passwords that are at least 8 characters in length and we do not allow users to set the passwords that are found in commonly used passwords lists.
2-Factor Authentication (2FA): 2-Factor authentication is available in the Qualia Dashboard. All our employees require having 2FA enabled to access any systems to ensure data safety. Institutions can request to enforce two-factor authentication for all of their staff accounts.
API Access: To access the stored data programmatically, specific institutions can access Qualia’s API that uses JTW authentication tokens to provide secure access with short-lived access tokens that can be refreshed programmatically.
Data Encryption: We encrypt all requests in transit, at rest and in all our backups. Qualia systems can only be accessed through HTTPS protocol to ensure data integrity, confidentiality, and availability.
Data Portability: Qualia enables you to export your data from our system in a variety of formats such as XLS, CSV, PDF, HTML, SPSS so that you can back it up, or use it with other applications.
Privacy: We have a comprehensive privacy policy that provides a very transparent view of how we handle your data, including how we use your data, who we share it with, and how long we retain it.
High Availability: Our application servers are placed under a load balancer to handle the traffic and auto-scale when needed. Our databases are set up as sharded clusters, therefore if the server fails a new primary node will be promoted.
Power: Servers have redundant internal and external power supplies.
Uptime: Continuous uptime monitoring, with immediate escalation to Qualia Analytics staff for any downtime.
Uptime: Continuous uptime monitoring, with immediate escalation to Qualia Analytics staff for any downtime.
Third Party Scans: Weekly security scans are performed by Qualys.
Testing: System functionality and design changes are verified in an isolated test “sandbox” environment and subject to functional and security testing prior to deployment to active production systems.
Firewall: Firewall restricts web server access to all ports except 80 (http) and 443 (https). Our database servers are only accessible from the internal network.
Patching: Latest security patches are applied to all operating system and application files to mitigate newly discovered vulnerabilities.
Access Control: Role-based access is enforced for systems management by authorized engineering staff.
Logging and Auditing: Central logging systems capture and archive all internal systems access including any failed authentication attempts.
Backup Frequency: Automatic database backups are scheduled to run every hour. Backups are encrypted using a public-private key encryption and stored in multiple geographically disparate sites. Database backups are stored for 1 year allowing to fully restore a system from any point of time.
Production Redundancy: Data is stored on a RAID 10 array. O/S stored on a RAID 1 array.
Training: We provide security training where appropriate.
Audit Logging: We maintain and monitor audit logs on our services and systems (our logging systems generate gigabytes of log files each day).
Two-factor security: All our critical systems are enforced with 2 Factor security to avoid password compromises.
Stack: We code in JavaScript, Java, PHP and Go. Our data is stored in MongoDB, MySQL and Redis. Our productions servers run on Ubuntu LTS versions.
Coding Practices: Our engineers use best practices and industry-standard secure coding guidelines to ensure the code produced is reliable, robust and secure.
Despite best efforts, methods of transmission over the Internet and methods of electronic storage is not perfectly secure. Thus, while we can never guarantee absolute security, we can (and do) proactively mitigate risks to security on your behalf. However, if a security breach were to occur, our breach notification procedures are consistent with our obligations under various laws and regulation in the United States (state and federal) and across Europe. As such,we adhere to, industry rules and standards for notification procedures, which include providing email notices to any affected users or posting a notice on our website if a breach should occur, so appropriate protective steps can be taken.
Keeping your data secure also depends on you ensuring that you maintain the security of your account by using sufficiently complicated passwords and storing them safely. You should also ensure that you have sufficient security on your own systems, to keep any survey data you download to your own computer away from prying eyes. Your password can be changed by accessing your Account Settings via your Dashboard in the Qualia platform. We recommend that you enable 2-factor security from your account settings for additional security.
Specific security questions can be addressed by contacting our System Administrators (sysadmin@qualiaanalytics.org) and/or Data Protection Officer (dpo@qualiaanalytics.org). Your question and accompanying details may then be forwarded to members of our Software Development team.
Last update: 26 October 2020
