Fortify

Security Overview

Fortify is a cloud application used by organizations of all sizes to manage the purchase and sale of capital equipment, enterprise software, and other essential-use assets. Our platform allows organizations to focus on selling and acquiring assets while Fortify focuses on the infrastructure, financing, and data management. 

Our platform is designed to protect users from threats by applying security controls at every layer from physical to application, isolating customer applications and data, and with its ability to rapidly deploy security updates without customer interaction or service interruption.

Security Assessments and Compliance

Fortify’s physical infrastructure is built on Heroku, a cloud application platform hosted and managed within Amazon’s secure data centers and utilizing 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)

Physical Security

Fortify 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://www.heroku.com/policy/security and https://aws.amazon.com/security

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 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 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.  Heroku 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.

Customer Security Best Practices

Encrypt Data in Transit

Fortify uses HTTPS for applications and SSL database connections to protect sensitive data transmitted to and from applications.

Encrypt Sensitive Data at Rest

Fortify leverages Heroku to encrypt stored files and data within the database to maintain optimal data security requirements.

Authentication

Access to sensitive data is restricted to authorized individuals only. Fortify’s authentication layer is built on Auth0, an enterprise-grade authentication & authorization platform. Auth0 continually manages risk and undergoes recurring assessments to ensure compliance with industry standards. Auth0 has been accredited under:

  • ISO 27001
  • ISO 27018
  • SOC 2 Type II
  • HIPAA BAA
  • Gold CSA STAR
  • PCI DSS Compliance

For additional information see: https://auth0.com/security

Fortify leverages two main strategies provided by Auth0: 

  1. Anomaly Detection
  2. Universal Login Support

Anomaly Detection

Auth0 provides three built-in shields that detect anomalies among users in Fortify. Used separately or in combination, the shields have the ability to stop malicious access attempts before they occur. Fortify receives alerts of suspicious activity and can then block future login attempts by an aberrant user.

Brute-Force Protection

Within its Brute-Force Protection feature, Auth0 has two distinct shields:

  1. Shield 1 is triggered after 10 failed login attempts on a single account from the same IP address.
  2. Shield 2 is triggered after 100 failed login attempts from a single IP address via different usernames in 24 hours or after 50 sign-up attempts in one minute from the same IP address.

When Shield 1's threshold is reached, an email is automatically sent to the user.

When Shield 2 is triggered, Fortify administrators are notified. Brute-Force Protection will also block the suspicious IP address. When the issue is resolved, an administrator simply locates the user in the Auth0 Dashboard and files an action to unblock. A user can also click on the "unblock" link provided in the email above or change their password.

Breached-Password Detection

The third shield is breached-password detection. 

Breached-password detection is used in instances where Auth0 suspects that a user's email has been compromised in a major security breach. (Auth0 consistently tracks these on third-party sites.) If this occurs, Auth0 will trigger the shield, notify the user, and block them from logging in until they reset their information.

Universal Login

Fortify leverages universal login. In contrast to embedded login, this offers increased security.

Universal login is a more seamless experience for the user. On the front end he or she sees a simple authentication request; on the back end, credentials remain within the same domain instead of being sent across origins. This makes it a far more secure method than exposing the information to outside sources. 

In addition to an enhanced customer experience, universal login is simpler for administrators to maintain and provides the benefits of single sign-on (SSO).

Use of Third-Party Solutions

In use of Fortify you may choose to use third party services for added functionality such as DocuSign, a online document signature service, 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 with Fortify.

Contact Us

If you have any questions or concerns about this security overview or our services, please contact us at:

Malartu, Inc. DBA Fortify

310 S Harrington St

Raleigh, NC 27603

support@fortifypay.com