LAST UPDATED: 2022-12-19

Overview

Accessibility Cloud is a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) solution that offers monitoring and testing tools for web accessibility, document accessibility, site quality, and more. At Accessibility Cloud, we are dedicated to ensuring the highest level of data protection and maintaining the trust of our customers. Through our Information Security Policy, we provide details about the secure and resilient software platform we have developed, covering areas such as application, cloud, and corporate securities.

Please note that this Policy is not intended to serve as a legal document. Instead, it offers an overview of Accessibility Cloud’s security practices and serves as a helpful resource for customers evaluating our platform. For legal documents, please refer to our website.

Cloud & Infrastructure Security

Data Storage and Cloud Security

Microsoft Azure (Azure) is a cloud computing platform operated by Microsoft that enables access, management, and development of applications and services through global data centers. Our services are hosted on Azure.

Azure adheres to a wide range of security and compliance standards, including some of the most stringent in the market. Whether the data is stored locally or in the cloud, Azure maintains the highest standards for both physical and cloud security. These measures include: (a) stringent access authorization and monitoring protocols; (b) privacy practices audited against international standards; (c) default encryption; (d) multiple layers of physical security to safeguard the servers. For more information on Azure’s security practices, please consult Azure compliance.

All customer data is stored exclusively in our Azure production environment, located physically in Gävle, Sweden. Accessibility Cloud utilizes Azure to control the physical storage location of customer data and depending on request, customer data could also be stored in other countries or regions.

All data is securely stored on Azure servers, as outlined above. Accessibility Cloud does not store any data on its premises.

Data Retention Policy

Customer data is preserved for the duration of their active status as a customer. Accessibility Cloud offers tools to active customers, enabling them to delete their data whenever they choose. Data is stored until it is overwritten by the customer or until thirty days after the contract termination date, at which point Accessibility Cloud automatically erases the personal data.

Data Encryption and Anonymization

Confidentiality and integrity of data are guaranteed through the implementation of up-to-date encryption protocols. Encryption is applied to both data in transit and at rest. Only higher technical management at Accessibility Cloud, who meet stringent access requirements including two-factor authentication, have access to servers, server networks, and data at rest.

Accessibility Cloud supports the most recent secure cipher suites to encrypt all external traffic in transit, utilizing TLS 1.2 protocols and AES256 encryption. Server disks are encrypted at rest using AES256.

Whenever feasible, personal data is anonymized, including the masking of IP addresses before storage.

Backup

All data undergoes daily backups with Point-in-Time Recovery using write-ahead-log backups streamed to Azure Storage. Point-in-Time Recovery can be achieved within sixty minutes of a physical or technical incident, with a Recovery Time Objective of twenty-four hours.

Backups are stored for a duration of thirty days after processing. Once this period elapses, backup data is permanently overwritten. We also perform daily disk snapshots that are retained for fourteen days.

Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery

Accessibility Cloud has established plans for business continuity and disaster recovery. These plans prioritize the prevention of service outages by implementing redundancy measures for telecommunications, systems, and business operations. Additionally, recovery strategies are in place to address availability or performance issues in a timely manner whenever they arise, ensuring minimal impact on customers.

Security Architecture

Accessibility Cloud is a web-based solution that operates on an API infrastructure and is accessed via the Internet. We provide a multi-tenant solution where storage and services are shared among customers to ensure optimal performance, scalability, and reliability. To maintain data privacy, there is logical separation between different customer accounts, ensuring that each customer can only access their own data.

Accessibility Cloud follows the principle of least privilege. Access control settings, file system access privileges, network port access, and similar privileges are disabled by default and only enabled when necessary for operational purposes using the minimum required resources. These privileges are managed idempotently through a configuration management process.

Components of the platform that are not designed to persist state in accordance with the security guidelines outlined in this document are considered stateless. Therefore, non-stateful components do not store any customer data at rest. Access to and from the public Internet is handled by several reverse proxying servers, ensuring that application instances and infrastructure components are not directly reachable from the public Internet.

Unauthenticated contexts, such as the public web page, are isolated from the authenticated context at the network level. Additionally, infrastructure layer contexts are also isolated at the network level to strictly limit the potential impact of a breach. Infrastructure configuration cannot be accessed from the application context, and vice versa.

System Logging

All requests made to and in-band access of Accessibility Cloud are consolidated in a centralized logging system. These logs encompass a range of information, including HTTP/HTTPS requests, platform events, system events, and security events pertaining to access or attempted access of individual servers. The collected logs are stored in an unchangeable, searchable index that can only be accessed by personnel with the highest level of system access.

In the event of a significant security incident, a report will be shared with the affected customers as quickly as possible.

User Management, Authentication, and Remote Access

Users of the system must possess a valid login ID and password. Access to Accessibility Cloud for customers is conducted through HTTPS (TLS), and authentication is performed using OAuth2 with Auth0, an Okta company. We offer both regular user and admin user permission roles.

Remote access to the application environment is restricted to system operations personnel. Access is consistently encrypted and routed through dedicated jump hosts and firewalls. All remote access necessitates public key authentication and/or two-factor authentication, depending on the target.

Remote access is managed through Azure Identity and Access Management (IAM), enabling centralized granting and revoking of access.

Software Development Life Cycle

Accessibility Cloud excels in continuously evolving its feature set. Through a modern, continuous delivery approach, new code undergoes development, testing, approval, merging, and deployment several times a week. Specialized teams of engineers conduct thorough code reviews and quality assurance. Approval is managed by designated repository owners. Approved code is automatically submitted to the integration environment for compilation, packaging, and unit testing. If it passes all tests, the new code is automatically deployed across the application tier.

Code deployments include backups of production-grade code for easy roll-back in case of failures. The deploying team monitors application health and initiates roll-back procedures promptly when failures occur.

As part of our continuous deployment model, we utilize extensive software gating and traffic management to control the availability of features based on customer preferences, such as private beta, public beta, or full launch. Major feature changes are communicated to users through in-app messages and/or product update posts.

Newly developed and built code is initially deployed to the dedicated and separate Accessibility Cloud staging environment for final testing before being promoted to production. Customer data is never utilized by Accessibility Cloud in the staging environment, and no testing activities involve customer data.

Accessibility Cloud is built on a modern web stack, prioritizing the careful selection of frameworks, libraries, and technologies. For instance, protection against SQL injections is integrated directly into the database driver using bind variables to avoid code omissions. We rely on widely-used technologies and established standards, benefiting from extensively reviewed security methods. Our authentication, session management, and password encryption schemes have been deployed and updated for a long time with regular security reviews. Additionally, we utilize the widely-adopted OAuth 2 standard for our API.

Deployment

Only authorized individuals can deploy code to production environments in Accessibility Cloud. The deployment process is carefully managed, gradually rolling out the code to avoid downtime. We closely monitor services during deployments, logging code errors, authentication warnings, error rates, response times, and security scans. If a deployment negatively impacts these metrics, we quickly revert it. Our testing procedures include automated and manual flows, covering product deployment and system administration. This involves testing for vulnerabilities, monitoring error rates, scanning for security issues, personal code review, and quality assurance testing by a dedicated team.

Application Security

In its commitment to safeguarding customer data and websites, Accessibility Cloud integrated Azure Firewall, which automatically detects and defends against attacks targeted at Accessibility Cloud products. Additionally, the security updates of application component dependencies are automatically monitored, and the application code undergoes scanning for security issues using a widely recognized static code analyzer.

Monitoring

Accessibility Cloud internally monitors all its services, generating metrics for availability and performance. External-facing services are also monitored using external uptime control services. Incidents are promptly assigned to the systems operations team for resolution.

The Accessibility Cloud security team employs a multi-layered approach for vulnerability scanning. Continuous scanning is done on applications and infrastructure, addressing the latest vulnerabilities. Static code analysis identifies potential security weaknesses during development.

Administrative access, privileged command usage, and system calls on all servers within Accessibility Cloud’s production network are meticulously logged. All production logs are securely stored in Azure Monitor Logs, which are immutable and accessible only to relevant security personnel.

Operational Security

Incident Management and Personal Data Breach

Accessibility Cloud maintains policies and procedures for incident response. Incidents are classified based on severity, and affected customers are notified through email by the customer success team. Incident response procedures are regularly tested and updated.

Vulnerability Management

Accessibility Cloud maintains an internal vulnerability management program. Vulnerability scanners are used to identify and patch issues in both internal and external endpoints. The security team receives daily threat intelligence feeds to monitor new vulnerabilities and assess risks. Periodical Azure Security Control scans detect vulnerable services in the production environment. Exceptions are reported to the DevOps team for investigation. Azure, the hosting provider, handles infrastructure patching and configuration maintenance. High-risk vulnerabilities are mitigated promptly, while low-risk vulnerabilities are addressed without impacting platform stability. Non-security software updates are applied continuously to prevent interruptions.

Configuration and Change Management

Azure App Configuration is utilized to centrally manage Accessibility Cloud’s production servers throughout their lifecycle and to ensure that baseline security configurations are consistently pushed out to all servers. Any changes made to Azure App Configuration go through peer review.

Use of Accessibility Cloud & Processing of Personal Data

Accessibility Cloud is specifically designed and developed to gather and process non-confidential or non-protected content from customers’ public-facing web pages. The utilization of Accessibility Cloud is governed by the Terms of Use and is restricted to public websites. It is important to note that Accessibility Cloud should not be utilized to crawl customers’ intranets, log-in-protected websites, customers’ internal networks, staging websites, private databases, or any other non-public websites.

Customers maintain ownership and responsibility for all the content hosted and published on their websites. The usage of our platform may also involve the processing of personal data found on customers’ websites, which is regulated by laws such as the General Data Protection Regulation (EU) 2016/679 (GDPR) and the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA).

Accessibility Cloud is not intended to be utilized on websites that contain sensitive information, special categories of personal data (as defined in GDPR Article 9), or information subject to heightened regulations (e.g., HIPAA, FERPA, PCI DSS). Therefore, we must not receive or be granted access to sensitive data or information protected by heightened regulations.

Corporate Security

Confidentiality

Accessibility Cloud guarantees that all staff members are legally obligated to maintain confidentiality as a prerequisite for their employment. Furthermore, personnel undergo comprehensive training to ensure they are aware of their duties and responsibilities, specifically with regards to maintaining confidentiality.

Security Awareness

Accessibility Cloud has established a comprehensive security awareness training initiative, wherein all team members are required to undergo annual training that encompasses role-specific instruction and regular simulations of social engineering tactics. Additionally, personnel are engaged in phishing awareness campaigns and are consistently informed about emerging threats through ongoing communication channels. They are also granted access to a frequently asked questions resource pertaining to security measures.

Employee Authentication & Authorization

The principle of least privilege is implemented across all systems within Accessibility Cloud, ensuring that permissions are granted based on a specific profile. Accessibility Cloud maximizes the use of single sign-on (SSO) for staff members to access both internal and external tools and services, to the greatest extent feasible. In the event of an employee’s termination or departure, Accessibility Cloud promptly revokes all system access, consistently within a 24-hour timeframe.

Corporate Physical Security

Access to Accessibility Cloud’s offices is restricted exclusively to authorized personnel and is regulated through the use of access cards or keys. All visitors are diligently registered and are never left unaccompanied within the premises of Accessibility Cloud.

Supply Chain Security

Accessibility Cloud engages in collaborative partnerships with multiple vendors to deliver some of our optional services. These vendors undergo thorough evaluations conducted by our information security, compliance, and legal teams to ensure the implementation of appropriate security controls within their respective environments. Should Accessibility Cloud decide to onboard a new vendor, our personnel will conduct comprehensive security reviews as part of the due diligence process. Additionally, we conduct annual risk assessments to ensure that vendors are effectively maintaining their security and compliance standards. It is important to note that certain vendors, referred to as sub-processors, handle personal data on behalf of our customers. For detailed information regarding the legal obligations associated with the use of sub-processors, please refer to the Data Processing Agreement you have signed with Accessibility Cloud.