CrowdEngine is a platform used by organizations of all sizes to deploy and operate crowdfunding portals, allowing organizations to focus on market development and business strategy while CrowdEngine focuses on infrastructure management, scaling, and security. CrowdEngine takes security very seriously, and uses the best security practices so our customers can focus on their business. Our platform inherently protects customers from threats by applying security controls at every layer from physical to application without customer interaction or service interruptions.

---

DATA CENTERS

CrowdEngine’s physical infrastructure is hosted and managed within Amazon’s secure data centers and utilizes the 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 and SOC 2/SSAE 16/ISAE 3402 (Previously SAS 70 Type II)
• PCI Level 1
• FISMA Moderate
• Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX)

PCI COMPLIANCE

CrowdEngine uses PCI compliant payment processors like Paypal, Stripe, and WePay for encrypting and processing credit card payments. CrowdEngine’s infrastructure provider is PCI Level 1 compliant.

PHYSICAL SECURITY

CrowdEngine 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. 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 providers 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. We work closely with our 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 which it is not addressed to. CrowdEngine utilizes application isolation, operating system restrictions, and encrypted connections to further ensure risk is mitigated at all levels.

PORT SCANNING

Port scanning is prohibited and every reported instance is investigated by our infrastructure provider. When port scans are detected, they are stopped and access is blocked.

SYSTEM AUTHENTICATION

Operating system access is limited to CrowdEngine staff and requires username and key authentication. Our operating systems do not allow password authentication to prevent password brute force attacks, theft, and sharing.

VULNERABILITY MANAGEMENT

Our vulnerability management process is designed to remediate risks without customer interaction or impact. CrowdEngine 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 CrowdEngine’s environment, ranked based on risk, and assigned to the appropriate team for resolution.

New systems are deployed with the latest updates, security fixes, and CrowdEngine configurations and existing systems are decommissioned as customers are migrated to the new instances. This process allows CrowdEngine to keep the environment up-to-date. Since customer applications run in isolated environments, they are unaffected by these core system updates.

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 example, user applications running within an isolated dyno are denied access to the CrowdEngine management infrastructure as each is within its own network security group and access is not allowed between the two.

CROWDENGINE APPLICATION SECURITY

We undergo vulnerability assessments, and source code reviews to assess the security of our application, architecture, and implementation. Our third party security assessments cover all areas of our platform including testing for OWASP Top 10 web application vulnerabilities and customer application isolation. CrowdEngine works closely with external security assessors to review the security of the CrowdEngine platform and applications and apply best practices.

Issues found in CrowdEngine applications are risk ranked, prioritized, assigned to the responsible team for remediation, and CrowdEngine’s security team reviews each remediation plan to ensure proper resolution.

BACKUPS

Customer Applications

Applications deployed to the CrowdEngine platform are automatically backed up as part of the deployment process on secure, access controlled, and redundant storage. We use these backups to deploy your application across our platform and to automatically bring your application back online in the event of an outage.

Customer Databases

Continuous Protection keeps data safe on CrowdEngine. Every change to your data is written to write-ahead logs, which are shipped to multi-datacenter, high-durability storage. In the unlikely event of unrecoverable hardware failure, these logs can be automatically ‘replayed’ to recover the database to its last backup

Our platform automatically restores customer applications and databases in the case of an outage. The CrowdEngine platform is designed to dynamically deploy applications within the CrowdEngine cloud, monitor for failures, and recover failed platform components including customer applications and databases.

Please contact us if you have any questions or comments about our security measures or policies.