LabFellows® | Information Security Posture
December 2019
Security Assessments & Compliance
LabFellows is a cloud-deployed SaaS platform streamlining the procurement, operations, and lab compliance needs of life science businesses. Deployments of the solution have been primarily in the Amazon AWS Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) and HIPAA Cloud. Locations of deployment in AWS include Virginia and Oregon.
LabFellow’s physical infrastructure is hosted and managed within Amazon’s secure data centers and utilize the Amazon Web Service (AWS) technology. Locations of deployment in AWS include Virginia and Oregon. Amazon continually manages risk and undergoes recurring assessments to ensure compliance with industry standards. Amazon’s data center operations have been accredited under:
• ISO 27001
• SOC 1 and SOC 2/SSAE 16/ISAE 3402 (Previously SAS 70 Type II)
• PCI Level 1
• FISMA Moderate
• Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX)
Physical Security
LabFellows utilizes ISO 27001 and FISMA certified data centers managed by Amazon. Amazon has many years of experience in designing, constructing, and operating large-scale data centers. This experience has been applied to the AWS platform and infrastructure. AWS data centers are housed in nondescript facilities, and critical facilities have extensive setback and military grade perimeter control berms as well as other natural boundary protection. Physical access is strictly controlled both at the perimeter and at building ingress points by professional security staff utilizing video surveillance, state-of-the-art intrusion detection systems, and other electronic means. Authorized staff must pass two-factor authentication no fewer than three times to access data center floors. All visitors and contractors are required to present identification and are signed in and continually escorted by authorized staff.
Amazon only provides data center access and information to employees who have a legitimate business need for such privileges. When an employee no longer has a business need for these privileges, his or her access is immediately revoked, even if they continue to be an employee of Amazon or Amazon Web Services.
All physical and electronic access to data centers by Amazon employees is logged and audited routinely.
Environmental Safeguards
Fire Detection and Suppression
Automatic fire detection and suppression equipment have been installed to reduce risk. The fire detection system utilizes smoke detection sensors in all data center environments, mechanical and electrical infrastructure spaces, chiller rooms, and generator equipment rooms. These areas are protected by either wet-pipe, double-interlocked pre-action, or gaseous sprinkler systems.
Power
The data center electrical power systems are designed to be fully redundant and maintainable without impact to operations, 24 hours a day, and seven days a week. Uninterruptible Power Supply (UPS) units provide back-up power in the event of an electrical failure for critical and essential loads in the facility. Data centers use generators to provide backup power for the entire facility.
Climate and Temperature Control
Climate control is required to maintain a constant operating temperature for servers and other hardware, which prevents overheating and reduces the possibility of service outages. Data centers are conditioned to maintain atmospheric conditions at optimal levels. Monitoring systems and data center personnel ensure temperature and humidity are at the appropriate levels.
Management
Datacenter staff monitor electrical, mechanical, and life support systems and equipment so issues are immediately identified. Preventative maintenance is performed to maintain the continued operability of equipment.
Network Security
Firewalls
Firewalls are utilized to restrict access to systems from external networks and between systems internally. By default, all access is denied, and only explicitly allowed ports and protocols are allowed based on business needs. Each system is assigned to a firewall security group based on the system’s function. Security groups restrict access to only the ports and protocols required for a system’s specific function to mitigate risk.
Host-based firewalls restrict customer applications from establishing localhost connections over the loopback network interface to further isolate customer applications. Host-based firewalls also provide the ability to further limit inbound and outbound connections as needed.
DDoS Mitigation
Our infrastructure provides DDoS mitigation techniques including TCP Syn cookies and connection rate limiting in addition to maintaining multiple backbone connections and internal bandwidth capacity that exceeds the Internet carrier supplied bandwidth. Our infrastructure provider works closely with providers to quickly respond to events and enable advanced DDoS mitigation controls when needed.
Spoofing and Sniffing Protections
Managed firewalls prevent IP, MAC, and ARP spoofing on the network and between virtual hosts to ensure spoofing is not possible. Packet sniffing is prevented by infrastructure including the hypervisor which will not deliver traffic to an interface to which it is not addressed to. Our infrastructure provider utilizes application isolation, operating system restrictions, and encrypted connections to further ensure risk is mitigated at all levels.
Port Scanning
Managed firewalls prevent IP, MAC, and ARP spoofing on the network and between virtual hosts to ensure spoofing is not possible. Packet sniffing is prevented by infrastructure including the hypervisor which will not deliver traffic to an interface to which it is not addressed to. Our infrastructure provider utilizes application isolation, operating system restrictions, and encrypted connections to further ensure risk is mitigated at all levels.
Data Security
Environment Isolation
Each instance of the LabFellows application runs within its own isolated environment and cannot interact with other applications or areas of the system. This restrictive operating environment is designed to prevent security and stability issues. These self-contained environments isolate processes, memory, and the file system using LXC while host-based firewalls restrict applications from establishing local network connections.
System Security
System Configuration
System configuration and consistency are maintained through standard, up-to-date images, configuration management software, and replacing systems with updated deployments. Systems are deployed using up-to-date images that are updated with configuration changes and security updates before deployment. Once deployed, existing systems are decommissioned and replaced with up-to-date systems.
System Authentication
Operating system access is limited to personnel employed by our infrastructure provider and requires a username and key authentication. Operating systems do not allow password authentication to prevent password brute force attacks, theft, and sharing.
Vulnerability Management
The vulnerability management process is designed to remediate risks without customer interaction or impact. Our infrastructure provider is notified of vulnerabilities through internal and external assessments, system patch monitoring, and third party mailing lists and services. Each vulnerability is reviewed to determine if it is applicable to our environment, ranked based on risk, and assigned to the appropriate team for resolution.
New systems are deployed with the latest updates, security fixes, and configurations, and existing systems are decommissioned as customers are migrated to the new instances. This process allows our environments to be kept up-to-date. These core system updates do not affect LabFellows application instances.
To further mitigate risk, each component type is assigned to a unique network security group. These security groups are designed to only allow access to the ports and protocols required for the specific component type.
For additional information see: https://aws.amazon.com/security
LabFellows® | Penetration Testing Report
LabFellows values customer and data security and strives to continually take every measure possible to protect data, implement industry-standard security protocols, and maintain a secure application. Penetration testing and vulnerability mitigation against OWASP standards are routinely performed to identify and mitigate vulnerabilities.