Data Protection

PURPOSE

SWIFT Geospatial takes the confidentiality and integrity of its customer data very seriously. As stewards and partners of SWIFT Geospatial Customers, we strive to assure data is protected from unauthorised access and that it is available when needed. The following policies drive many of our procedures and technical controls in support of the SWIFT Geospatial mission of data protection.

Production systems that create, receive, store, or transmit Customer data (hereafter “Production Systems”) must follow the requirements and guidelines described in this section.

POLICY STATEMENTS

SWIFT Geospatial policy requires that:
(a) Data must be handled and protected according to its classification requirements and following approved encryption standards, if applicable.
(b) Whenever possible, store data of the same classification in a given data repository and avoid mixing sensitive and non-sensitive data in the same repository. Security controls, including authentication, authorisation , data encryption, and auditing, should be applied according to the highest classification of data in a given repository.
(c) Al unnecessary workforce members shall not have direct administrative access to production data during normal business operations. Exceptions include emergency operations such as forensic analysis and manual disaster recovery.
(d) All Production Systems must disable services that are not required to achieve the business purpose or function of the system.
(e) All access to Production Systems must be logged.
(f) All Production Systems must have security monitoring enabled, including activity and file integrity monitoring, vulnerability scanning, and/or malware detection, as applicable.

CONTROLS AND PROCEDURES

DATA PROTECTION IMPLEMENTATION AND PROCESSES

Data is classified and handled according to the SWIFT Geospatial Data Handling Specifications and Data Classification document.

Critical, confidential and internal data will be tagged upon creation, if tagging is supported. Each tag maps to a data type defined in the data classification scheme, which then maps to a protection level for encryption, access control, backup, and retention. Data classification may alternatively be identified by its location/repository.

Critical and confidential data is always stored and transmitted securely, using approved encryption standards. More details are specified in SWIFT Geospatial Data Classification and Handling document.

All IT systems that process and store sensitive data follow the provisioning process, configuration, change management, patching and anti-malware.

CUSTOMER/PRODUCTION DATA PROTECTION

SWIFT Geospatial hosts on Amazon Web Services in the OREGON region as well as Cape Town by default. Data is replicated across multiple regions for redundancy and disaster recovery.

All SWIFT Geospatial employees, systems, and resources adhere to the following standards and processes to reduce the risk of compromise of Production Data:

1. Implement and/or review controls designed to protect Production Data from improper alteration or destruction.
2. Ensure that confidential data is stored in a manner that supports user access logs and automated monitoring for potential security incidents.
3. Ensure SWIFT Geospatial Customer Production Data is segmented and only accessible to Customer authorized to access data.
4. All Production Data at rest is stored on encrypted volumes using encryption keys managed by SWIFT Geospatial. Encryption at rest is ensured through the use of automation where possible.
5. Volume encryption keys and machines that generate volume encryption keys are protected from unauthorized access. Volume encryption key material is protected with access controls such that the key material is only accessible by privileged accounts.
6. Encrypted volumes use approved cipher algorithms, key strength, and key management process.

Access

SWIFT Geospatial employee access to production is guarded by an approval process and by default is disabled. When access is approved, temporary access is granted that allows access to production. Production access is reviewed by the security team on a case by case basis.

Separation

Customer data is logically separated at the database/datastore level using a unique identifier for the institution.

Backup and Recovery

For details on the backup and recovery process, see controls and procedures defined in Data Management.

Monitoring

SWIFT Geospatial uses AWS CloudWatch/CloudTrail to monitor the entire cloud service operation. If a system failure and alarm is triggered, key personnel are notified by text, chat, and/or email message in order to take appropriate corrective action. Escalation may be required and there is an on-call rotation for major services when further support is necessary.

Protecting Data At Rest

Encryption of Data at Rest

All databases, data stores, and file systems are encrypted.

Local Disk/Volume Encryption

Encryption and key management for local disk encryption of end-user devices follow the defined best practices for Windows, MacOS, and Linux/Unix operating systems, such as BitLocker and FileVault.

Protecting Data In Transit

  1. All external data transmission is encrypted end-to-end.
  2. This includes, but is not limited to, cloud infrastructure and third party vendors and applications.
  3. Transmission encryption is protected from unauthorized access. Transmission encryption materials are protected with access controls, and may only be accessed by privileged accounts.
  4. For all SWIFT Geospatial APIs, enforcement of authentication, authorisation , and auditing is used for all remote systems sending, receiving, or storing data.
  5. System logs of all transmissions of Production Data access are kept. These logs must be available for audit.

Encryption of Data in Transit

All internet and intranet connections are encrypted and authenticated.

Protecting Data In Use

Data in Use, sometimes known as Data in Process, refers to active data being processed by systems and applications which is typically stored in a non-persistent digital state such as in computer random-access memory (RAM), CPU caches, or CPU registers.

Protection of data in use relies on application layer controls and system access controls.

SWIFT Geospatial applications implement logical account-level data segregation to protect data in a multi-tenancy deployment. In addition, SWIFT Geospatial applications may incorporate advanced security features such as Runtime Application Self Protection (RASP) modules and Attribute Based Access Control (ABAC) for protection of data in use.

Encryption of Data in Transit

All internet and intranet connections are encrypted and authenticated.

Protecting Data In Use

Data in Use, sometimes known as Data in Process, refers to active data being processed by systems and applications which is typically stored in a non-persistent digital state such as in computer random-access memory (RAM), CPU caches, or CPU registers.

Protection of data in use relies on application layer controls and system access controls.

SWIFT Geospatial applications implement logical account-level data segregation to protect data in a multi-tenancy deployment. In addition, SWIFT Geospatial applications may incorporate advanced security features such as Runtime Application Self Protection (RASP) modules and Attribute Based Access Control (ABAC) for protection of data in use.

Data Integrity Protection

When appropriate, SWIFT Geospatial should implement “Versioning” and “Lifecycle”, or equivalent data management mechanism, such that direct edit and delete actions are not allowed on the data to prevent accidental or malicious overwrite. This protects against human errors and cyberattacks such as ransomware.

In AWS, the IAM and S3 bucket policy in production will be implemented accordingly when the environments are configured. When changes must be made, a new version is created instead of editing and overwriting existing data.

  • All edits create a new version and old versions are preserved for a period of time.
  • Data objects are “marked for deletion” when deleted so that they are recoverable if needed within a period of time.
  • Data is archived offsite – i.e. to separate AWS account and/or region.

Additionally, all access to confidential and proprietary electronic information is authenticated, and audited via logging of the infrastructure, systems and/or application.