Security

Our security features include use of redundant storage and servers, 256-bit SSL data transfer encryption, secure EU based hosting and infrastructure in state-of-the-art data centres, an uptime guarantee and automatic backup.

Hosting environment

Wazoku offers two hosting options – EU-based hosting with CloudAnt or for those who require UK hosting we offer hosting with Rackspace.

Rackspace offers the most highly speciﬁed data centres available today, built to exacting, rigorous standards and delivering unparalleled security, power, connectivity and environmental control.

Rackspace provides the world-class infrastructure necessary to keep Wazoku’s servers up and running uninterrupted around the clock. Wazoku hosts in two UK data centres, both of which are engineered with fully redundant connectivity, power and HVAC to avoid any single point of failure.

Application security

All data travelling between your employees’ browsers and our servers is encrypted using strong AES-256 256-bit SSL encryption, just like a banking website. We put no restriction on the length of our user’s passwords and encrypt them, storing them as salted SHA-512 digests so even we do not know what the password text is. Additionally, all customer data and intellectual property is stored in a separate database for each Wazoku domain, ensuring that there is no chance of data inadvertently being viewed by unauthorized people.

Wazoku provides each user with a unique user name and password that must be entered each time a user logs on. Wazoku issues a session cookie only to record encrypted authentication information for the duration of a speciﬁc session. The session cookie does not include the user name or password, or any user data, and it is deleted when the browser is closed.

Wazoku application security ensures that only those permitted by the domain admin can access its contents, controlled by a whitelist of permitted domains or user email addresses. Access controls are baked in to the Wazoku data model, and user permissions are veriﬁed on every request by the core Wazoku application framework.

Physical security

Public access to Rackspace data centres is strictly forbidden. They only host equipment that they own and manage themselves, obviating the need for anyone but their highly trained Rackspace Engineers to be allowed into the data centre.

In addition, Rackspace employs a series of physical security measures, including:

Live video surveillance of each data centre facility, monitored 24 hours per day
Onsite security personnel monitor each site 24 hours per day
Biometric hand scanners restrict access to each data centre
A pass card system restricts movement from room to room within each data centre

Rackspace data centres are unmarked to help maintain a low proﬁle, and these physical security measures are audited by an independent company.

System security

Our servers run a hardened OS, with security patches applied by Rackspace to provide on-going protection from exploits. Network level security is provided by dedicated Cisco ﬁrewalls, together with IDS and DDoS mitigation provided by Rackspace.

Rackspace have ISO27001 certiﬁcation for their operational policies and procedures, they are regularly reviewed as part of their SAS70 Type II audit. All system access is fully logged and tracked for auditing purposes, and all staff with access undergo a thorough background check in line with UK Government standards.

Hosting and security

Wazoku is a UK based company and all our infrastructure is located within the UK, in state-of-the-art data centres. This helps us ensure that your sensitive corporate information stays where it belongs, with you. UK hosting ensures that there is no risk of having your data exposed in countries where legislation enables governments to override your expectation of privacy.

Wazoku has been rigorously tested against web application vulnerabilities such as cross-site scripting (XSS), cross-site request forgery (XSRF) and SQL injection. Customers may also request to commission their own independent testing, including manual ethical hacking or request their own inspections of Wazoku’s ofﬁce environment, processes, and hosting facilities in order to ensure that they can rely on our security measures.

Uptime & resilience

At Wazoku we recognise that uptime is of the upmost importance for a business-critical web application. We employ external monitoring systems to track and record availability. We have a team available to respond in the unlikely event of a serious application issue.

Wazoku’s Service Level Agreement guarantees uptime of 99.9% every any 3 month period. Wazoku’s excellent uptime is achieved by planning in redundancy in every part of the system, coupled with careful quality assurance and change management. This redundancy applies to everything from power and network connections in to Rackspace data centres, ﬁrewalls, load balancers, switches, through to clustered web servers and database servers.

Backup & disaster recovery

All of Wazoku’s servers are backed up nightly, and backups are retained for two weeks. In addition, all data (database and ﬁle system) is mirrored almost immediately to standby servers in a second UK data centre. This second data centre deployment is likewise backed up nightly and backups are retained for two weeks.

In the event of the most serious of catastrophes resulting in the complete loss of our primary data centre access will transfer within a matter of minutes to our Disaster Recovery site. Data is replicated to this site in near real-time, so business as usual can proceed seamlessly.

Download the Security features in a handy pdf.