Security Policy
Overview
Phenom People understands the importance of ensuring the privacy of your personally identifiable information. Our commitment to customer privacy directs all of our decisions. Privacy is the responsibility of every employee, and it’s a job we take very seriously. (For more information, please see our Data Privacy Policy.)
Phenom People applies security best practices, manages platform security, and protects customers from threats by applying security controls at every layer.
Data center
Phenom People’s physical infrastructure is hosted and managed within Amazon’s secure data centers, as we utilize Amazon Web Service (AWS) technology. 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/SSAE 16/ISAE 3402 (Previously SAS 70 Type II)
PCI Level 1
FISMA Moderate
Sarbanes Oxley (SOX)
Penetration testing and vulnerability assessments
Third-party security testing of the Phenom Talent Management Experience platform is performed by independent and reputable security consulting firms. Findings from each assessment are reviewed with the assessors, risk ranked, and assigned to the responsible team.
Physical security
Phenom People 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. For additional information see: https://aws.amazon.com/security
Fire detection and suppression
Automatic fire detection and suppression equipment has 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
Data center 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. For additional information see: https://aws.amazon.com/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 need. 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.
Data backups
Application database backups for our products occur on the following frequencies: On site backups are performed daily and retained for seven days; Tape backups are taken weekly, which are then stored off site and retained for four weeks. All backup data is encrypted.
Customer data retention and destruction
You have the freedom to define what data your applications store and the ability to purge data from your databases to comply with your data retention requirements. If you deprovision an application and the associated database, we maintain the database’s storage volume for one week after which time its automatically destroyed rendering the data unrecoverable.
Decommissioning hardware is managed by our infrastructure provider using a process designed to prevent customer data exposure. AWS uses techniques outlined in DoD 5220.22-M (“National Industrial Security Program Operating Manual”) or NIST 800-88 (“Guidelines for Media Sanitization”) to destroy data. For additional information see: https://aws.amazon.com/security
People and access
Our global support team maintains an account on all hosted systems and applications for the purposes of maintenance and support. This support team accesses hosted applications and data only for purposes of application health monitoring and performing system or application maintenance, and upon customer request via our support system. Within Phenom People, only authorized Phenom People employees have access to application data. Authentication is done via individual passphrase-protected public keys, rather than passwords, and the servers only accept incoming SSH connections from Phenom People and internal data center IP addresses. Our products are designed to allow application data to be accessible only with appropriate credentials, such that one customer cannot access another customer’s data without explicit knowledge of that other customers’ login information. Customers are responsible for maintaining the security of their own login information.
Our operations team monitors the platform 24-7 from operation centers in Philadelphia & India. The Phenom People security team can be reached at supportsquad@phenompeople.com. For non-emergency issues, we encourage customers to open a support ticket.
Encrypt data in transit
Enable HTTPS for applications and SSL database connections to protect sensitive data transmitted to and from applications.
Encrypt sensitive data at rest
Customers with sensitive data can encrypt stored files and data within databases to meet their data security requirements. Data encryption can be deployed using industry standard encryption and the best practices for your language or frame.
Secure development practices
Apply development best practices for your chosen development language and framework to mitigate known vulnerability types such as those on the OWASP Top 10 Web Application Security Risks.
Authentication
To prevent unauthorized account access use a strong passphrase for both your Phenom People user account and SSH keys, store SSH keys securely to prevent disclosure, replace keys if lost or disclosed, and use Phenom People’s RBAC model to invite contributors rather than sharing user accounts.
Logging
Logging is critical for troubleshooting and investigating is sues. We provide you with three main options for interacting with their system, application, and API logs. Customers can receive all 3 types of logs via syslog from the Phenom People platform, choose to send logs to anPhenom People add-on, or interact with logs in real-time through the Phenom People client.
Use of third-party solutions
In developing your application on Phenom People you may choose to use third party services for added functionality such as Amazon’s S3, an email service provider, or any of our add on partners. Be mindful of the data shared with these providers and their security practices just as you would be.
