Security - How We Keep Your HR Data Safe | EmployeeConnect

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Security

How do we keep your data safe?

When reviewing HR Systems it’s important to consider both application security and the hosting environment. While a vendor can choose to host their system at one of many world class facilities and capitalise on the benefits of infrastructure and certification, if the application has not been built with security from the ground up, there could be risks with data and vulnerability.

EmployeeConnect has nearly two decades of building and implementing and supporting HR software across every industry and quite a few countries. As such, we know what it takes to deliver secure, robust enterprise HR systems accessible over the web. Furthermore, we aim to be as clear and open as we can about the way we handle security in terms of business continuity and disaster recovery.

EmployeeConnect staff operate from multiple locations and should a major incident limit or prevent us from utilising our main office, we have cloud based recovery options for administrative software and services to be restored. Our continuity plan provides for redirection of communications to our Auckland, Melbourne and/or Sydney and can switch to auto attendant for call redirection for consultants and support teams.

Confidentiality

We place strict controls over our employees’ access to the data you and your users make available via the EmployeeConnect Service Level Agreement, which covers the use of the EmployeeConnect services (“Customer Data”), and our commitment ensuring that Customer Data is not seen by anyone who should not have access to it. The operation of the EmployeeConnect services requires that some employees have access to the systems which store and process Customer Data. For example, in order to diagnose a problem you are having with the EmployeeConnect services, we may need to access your Customer Data. These employees are prohibited from using these permissions to view Customer Data unless it is necessary to do so. We have technical controls and audit policies in place to ensure that any access to Customer Data is logged.

All of our employees and contract personnel are bound to our policies regarding Customer Data and we treat these issues as matters of the highest importance within our company.

Personnel Practices

EmployeeConnect conducts background checks on all employees before employment, and employees receive security training during onboarding as well as on an ongoing basis. All employees are required to read and sign our comprehensive information security policy covering the security, availability, and confidentiality of the EmployeeConnect services.

Application Security

In addition to the work we do at the infrastructure level, we provide system administrators of the EmployeeConnect application with additional tools to enable their own users to protect their Customer Data.

Access Logging

Detailed access logs are available to administrators. We log every time a user signs in, or attempts to and noting a number of data items including the IP address of the connection. Administrators can also view who is connected and disable access for any connections and sign out a user from the EmployeeConnect services at any time, on-demand.

Two-Factor Authentication

There are many authentication options available, including two-factor authentication on their accounts. We also have application specific authentication, one way password encryption, Client definable strong password policy as well as the usual industry standard authentication capabilities including single sign on options.

Data Audit

EmployeeConnect audits database updates based on client configuration choices, enabling Insert, update and delete action to be recorded, including detail of the user, IP address, before, after and changed data content. A record of all system generated emails and integration logs are also maintained by default within the application.

Data Encryption In-Transit

The EmployeeConnect services support the latest recommended secure cipher suites and protocols to encrypt all traffic in transit. We monitor the changing cryptographic landscape closely and work promptly to upgrade the service to respond to new cryptographic weaknesses as they are discovered and implement best practices as they evolve, while also balancing the need for compatibility for older clients.

Network Protection

In addition to sophisticated system monitoring and logging, we have implemented two-factor authentication for all server access across our production environment. Firewalls are configured according to industry best practices and unnecessary ports are blocked by configuration of Security Groups.

Host Management

We perform automated vulnerability scans on our production hosts and remediate any findings that present a risk to our environment. We enforce screens lockouts and the usage of full disk encryption for company laptops.

Logging

EmployeeConnect maintains an extensive, centralized logging environment in its production environment which contains information pertaining to security, monitoring, availability, access, and other metrics about the EmployeeConnect services. These logs are analysed for security events via automated monitoring software, overseen by the security team.

EmployeeConnect Hosted Services

EmployeeConnect Hosted server/SaaS solutions operate out of two primary data centres located in Sydney, Australia and Hong Kong. We also operate AWS based servers for redundancy and for specific customer hosting options.

Australian Data Centre

EmployeeConnect primary servers and firewall appliances are housed in the Telstra Pacnet datacentre in Sydney’s CBD. It is a three-storey facility with highly-robust infrastructure designed for concurrent maintainability and fault tolerance to ensure constant availability of our infrastructure, application and data in the event of a failure. It is a Fault-tolerant, Tier III Standard facility with 60 cm raised floor with thermally-insulated slabs. Their certifications cover ISO27001, SOC 1/SSAE 16 & SOC 2

Data Centre Security

For those customers utilising EmployeeConnect’s datacentre in Sydney our provider (Telstra) combines stringent physical security measures with a state-of-the-art access control system to ensure that our equipment in the facility is always safe and secure.

High-performance Building Management System
(BMS) with power trending at each IT rack position
24 x 7 x 365 physical security
CCTV surveillance in all areas
Monitored access control
Biometric readers

Telecommunications

The facility offers direct access to Telstra/Pacnets privately owned submarine cable system connecting customers through over 46,420 kilometres of resilient, redundantly provisioned optical fibre system within Asia and across the Pacific, and is complimented by direct access to major domestic exchanges and Points of Presence (PoPs).

Carrier-neutral facility with dual redundant Meet Me Rooms and risers
Highly-secure network demarcation racks for cross connects and inter-patching

Environmental Controls

The facility utilises features redundant chillers and Computer Room Air Conditioners (CRACs) to optimise cooling efficiency to the deployment of variable control pumps and fans.

N+1 chillers
N+2 CRACs operating from a DDC controller
N+N chilled water risers
High-efficiency pumps and fans with variable speed
drives
Temperature managed between 20–25ºC, 50%
humidity +/-20%

Fire Protection

The facility features advanced, laser-based Very Early Smoke Detection Systems (VESDA) along with conventional detectors. The facility’s gas fire suppression systems provide first line of defence against fire and ensure control without the risk of equipment damage as may be caused by water-based systems.

Very Early Smoke Detection Apparatus (VESDA)
Point detectors operating on ‘Argonite’ gas suppression system.

Disaster Recovery

Customer Data is stored redundantly at multiple locations in our hosting provider’s datacentres to ensure availability. We have well-tested backup and restoration procedures, which allow recovery from a major disaster. Customer Data and our source code are automatically backed up nightly. The Operations team is alerted in case of a failure with this system. Backups are fully tested at least every 90 days to confirm that our processes and tools work as expected.

Azure Hong Kong Datacentre

Azure delivers a 99.95% compute SLA and enables you to run solutions on the same cloud that powers Skype, Office 365, Bing, and Xbox. Azure provides built-in software patching, network load balancing and high-availability features. Azure offers 24×7 technical support with engineers constantly monitoring service health.

Azure meets a broad set of international and industry-specific compliance standards, such as ISO 27001, HIPAA, FedRAMP, SOC 1 and SOC 2, as well as country-specific standards like Australia IRAP, UK G-Cloud, and Singapore MTCS.

Rigorous third-party audits, such as by the British Standards Institute, verify Azure’s adherence to the strict security controls these standards mandate. As part of our commitment to transparency, you can verify our implementation of many security controls by requesting audit results from the certifying third parties.

Datacentre Security

Direct access to the Azure Hypervisors is unavailable to customers and network isolation is used to separate traffic between tenants. There are various methods customers can use to increase the privacy of their Azure traffic, such as using Azure Private Virtual Networks and Azure ExpressRoute, which creates a direct connection to Azure, keeping your inter-site traffic off the Internet.

The physical environment is highly secured and access is extremely limited by using separation of duties and roles to make sure that no one person has too much knowledge of the systems. Failure to abide by the Microsoft Datacentre security policies means instant dismissal for the employee. In addition to this, personally identifiable information is stored separately from non-personally identifiable information.

All access to customer data is blocked by default, using a zero privileges policy. If this is allowed, it is time limited and fully audited. In addition to this, staff members who receive this access to customer data will not have physical datacentre access.

Redundancy and recovery

Azure platform leverages a global network of datacentres to maintain availability in a cost-effective manner. Locally Redundant Storage (LRS), data is stored locally within the users’ primary region. With Geo Redundant Storage (GRS), data is replicated 6 times in a secondary region 250+ miles from the primary region but within the same geography with 99.95% service availability

Furthermore our environment can be protected by automating the replication of the virtual machines based on policies that you set and control. Site Recovery can protect Hyper-V, VMware and physical servers and you can use Azure or your secondary datacentre as your recovery site. Site Recovery coordinates and manages the ongoing replication of data by integrating with existing technologies including System Center and SQL Server AlwaysOn.

Environmental sustainability

Microsoft is committed to driving software and technology innovations that help people and organisations improve the environment. Its goal is to reduce the impact of our operations and products, help other organisations reduce their impact, and to help drive dynamic industry best practices for environmental sustainability. Microsoft achieved Carbon Neutrality in 2014 and achieved the goal that all new datacentres have 1.125 Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) on average, which is one-third less than the industry average datacentre PUE of 1.7.

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