In order to reduce security risks to minimum, a holistic approach to security is required. Our security processes are born out of a clear definition of the threats to our system.
Security threats are a result of the various interaction points that an application provides to the external world, and the various users that can interact with these interfaces. For instance Your Customers, Your Resellers, Your staff, Our Staff, Anonymous Internet Users and Third Party Servers are interacting with our Systems at any given point of time. Each of these actors need to have different access levels and different rights and permissions.
Our Security platform and process leverage on multiple levels of security - consisting of Security Systems and Equipment1 combined with Security Procedures and Practices2 and Auditing Processes3, to ensure unparalleled security for all the services we provide. The platform tackles security at 7 different levels
Our global datacenter
partnerships are a result of a comprehensive Due diligence process.
Security and stability are two of the most important variables
in our due diligence process. All datacenters are equipped with
surveillance cameras, biometric locks, authorization-based
access policies, limited datacenter access, security personnel, and
similar standard security equipment, processes and operations.
What separates us however is the fact that our due diligence
process also incorporates a measure of proactiveness demonstrated by
the datacenter towards security. This is measured by evaluating
past practices, customer case studies, and the amount of time the
datacenter dedicates towards security research and study.
Our global infrastructure
deployments incorporate DDOS mitigators, Intrusion Detection
systems, and Firewalls both at the edge and the Rack level. Our
deployments have weathered frequent hacking and DDOS attempts
(sometimes as many as 3 in a single day) without any degradation.
Protection against Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS)
Attacks
Denial of Service is currently the top source
of financial loss due to cybercrime. The goal of a
Denial-of-Service attack is to disrupt your business activities
by stopping the operation of your web site, email or web
applications. This is achieved by attacking the servers or
network that host these services and overloading the key
resources such as bandwidth, CPU and memory. The typical motives
behind such attacks are extortion, bragging rights, political
statements, damaging competition etc. Virtually any organization
that connects to the Internet is vulnerable to these attacks. The
business impact of large sustained DoS attacks is colossal, as it
would lead to lost profits, customer dissatisfaction,
productivity loss etc due to inavailability or deterioration of
service. A DoS attack in most cases would even land you with the
largest bandwidth overage invoice that you have ever seen.
Our Distributed Denial-of-Service protection system provides unrivaled protection against DoS and DDoS attacks on your internet-facing infrastructures i.e. your websites, email and mission critical web applications, by using sophisticated state-of-the-art technology which automatically triggers itself as soon as an attack is launched. The DDoS mitigator's filtering system blocks almost all fraudulent traffic and ensures that legitimate traffic is allowed up to the largest extent possible. These systems have seamlessly protected several web sites from large service outages caused by simultaneous attacks as large as 300+ Mbps in the past, thus allowing organizations to focus on their Business.
Firewall Protection
Our round-the-clock
firewall protection system secures the perimeter and delivers the
very best first line of defense. It uses highly adaptive and
advanced inspection technology to safeguard your data, website,
email and web applications by blocking unauthorized network
access. It ensures controlled connectivity between the servers
that store your data and the Internet through the enforcement of
security policies devised by subject matter experts.
Network Intrusion Detection system
Our
network intrusion detection, prevention and vulnerability
management system provides rapid, accurate and comprehensive
protection against targeted attacks, traffic anomalies, "unknown"
worms, spyware/adware, network viruses, rogue applications and
other zero-day exploits. It uses ultramodern high-performance
network processors that carry out thousands of checks on each
packet flow simultaneously with no perceivable increase in
latency. As packets pass through our systems, they are fully
scrutinized to determine whether they are legitimate or harmful.
This method of instantaneous protection is the most effective
mechanism of ensuring that harmful attacks do not reach their
targets.
Hardware
Standardization We have standardized on hardware vendors
that have a track record of high security standards and quality
support. Most of our infrastructure and datacenter partners use
equipment from Cisco, Juniper, HP, Dell etc.
Host Based Intrusion Detection System
With the advent of tools that are able to bypass port blocking
perimeter defense systems such as firewalls, it is now essential
for enterprises to deploy Host-based Intrusion Detection System
(HIDS) which focuses on monitoring and analyising the internals
of a computing system. Our Host-based Intrusion Detection System
assists in detecting and pinpointing changes to the system and
configuration files - whether by accident, from malicious
tampering, or external intrusion - using heuristic scanners, host
log information, and by monitoring system activity. Rapid
discovery of changes decreases risk of potential damage, and also
reduces troubleshooting and recovery times, thus decreasing
overall impact and improving security and system availability.
Our applications run on
myriad systems with myriad server software. Operating Systems
include various flavors of Linux, BSD, Windows. Server Software
includes versions and flavors of Apache, IIS, Resin, Tomcat,
Postgres, MySQL, MSSQL, Qmail, Sendmail, Proftpd etc etc. We
ensure security despite the diverse portfolio of software
products we utilize by following a process-oriented approach
Timely Application of Updates, Bug Fixes and Security
Patches
All servers are registered for automatic
updates to ensure that they always have the latest security patch
installed and that any new vulnerabilities are rectified as soon
as possible. The largest number of intrusions result from
exploitation of known vulnerabilities, configuration errors, or
virus attacks where countermeasures ARE already available.
According to CERT, systems and networks are impacted by these
events as they have "not consistently" deployed the patches that
were released.
We fully understand the requirement for strong patch and update management processes. As operating systems and server software get more complex, each newer release is littered with security holes. Information and updates for new security threats are released on an almost daily basis. We have built consistent, repeatable processes and a reliable auditing and reporting framework which ensures that all our systems are always up-to-date.
Periodic Security Scans
Frequent checks are
run using enterprise grade security software to determine if any
servers have any known vulnerabilities. The servers are scanned
against the most comprehensive and up-to-date databases of known
vulnerabilities. This enables us to proactively protect our
servers from attacks and ensure business continuity by
identifying security holes or vulnerabilities before an attack
occurs.
Pre-Upgrade testing processes
Software
upgrades are released frequently by various software vendors.
while each vendor follows their own testing procedures prior to
release of any upgrade, they cannot test inter-operability issues
between various software. For instance a new release of a
database may be tested by the Database vendor. However the impact
of deploying this release on a production system running various
other FTP, Mail, Web Server software cannot be directly
determined. Our system administration team documents the impact
analysis of various software upgrades and if any of them are
perceived to have a high-risk, they are first beta-tested in our
labs before live deployment.
All of the application
software that is used in the platform is built by us. We do not
outsource development. Any 3rd party Products or Components go
through comprehensive training and testing procedures where all
elements of such products are broken down and knowledge about
their architecture and implementation is transferred to our
team. This allows us to completely control all variables involved
in any particular Product. All applications are engineered using
our proprietary Product Engineering Process which follows a
proactive approach towards security. Each application is broken
down into various components such as User Interface, Core API,
Backend Database etc. Each layer of abstraction has its own
security checks, despite the security checks performed by a
higher abstraction layer. All sensitive data is stored in an
encrypted format. Our engineering and development practices
ensure the highest level of security with regards to all
application software
The weakest link in the
security chain is always the people you trust. Personnel,
Development staff, Vendors, essentially anyone that has
privileged access to your system. Our Holistic Security
Approach attempts to minimize security risk brought on by the
"Human Factor". Information is divulged only on a "need-to-know"
basis. Authorization expires upon the expiry of the requirement.
Personnel are coached specifically in security measures and the
criticality of observing them.
Every employee that has administrator privileges to any of our servers goes through a comprehensive background check. Companies that skip out on this are putting to risk all sensitive and important data belonging to their customers, as no matter how much money is invested into high-end security solutions, one wrong hire - having the right amount of access - can cause greater damage than any external attack.
In a vast deployment of
globally distributed servers, audit processes are required to
ensure process replication and discipline. Are all servers being
patched regularly? Are the backup scripts running all the time?
Are offsite backups being rotated as desired? Are appropriate
reference checks being performed on all personnel? Is the
security equipment sending out timely alerts? These and many such
questions are regularly verified in an out-of-band process that
involves investigation, surveys, ethical hacking attempts,
interviews etc. Our audit mechanisms alert us to a kink in our
security processes before it is discovered by external users.