Together we keep PrivacyDocs secure. In this document we describe how.
You control your computer and email
You need to limit access to your space on PrivacyDocs to the individuals who are entitled to have it. We would not teach you how to secure your business. We assume that you provide PrivacyDocs with email addresses of the appropriate and authorized individuals.
We rely on the emails as the way to contact the individuals.
Emails and sessions
Anyone with access rights to your space on PrivacyDocs can login to the space. That includes you and the individuals whom you invited to PrivacyDocs by giving them access. You need to ensure that appropriate email addresseses are provided to PrivacyDocs.
We strongly recommend using email addresses that are linked to specific persons, and avoid using team emails (such as sales@yourcompany.com). If several individuals have access to an email address then each of them can login to PrivacyDocs, potentially, invite others, and you would not know who did that. When several individuals need to work together then you can invite them to PrivacyDocs and grant each appropriate permissions in the 'Client settings' dialog.
After you log in we keep a co-called 'session cookie' on your computer. You can be logged into PrivacyDocs from several browsers at the same time. Think of your smartphone and office computer. Placing this session cookie is required for the PrivacyDocs to operate and is included into the PrivacyDocs terms of service. We will keep you logged in for one month, so that you can continue your work uninterrupted. You can log out at any time yourself.
You need to ensure that you (or your colleagues working with PrivacyDocs) control your computers while being logged in. If someone else gets access to your computer (your colleague or an intruder) then he can act on your behalf, and we would not be able to distinguish his action from yours.
All of this is a standard way of providing Web services. Your Web email, office, or social media sites work the same way: after logging in they place a session cookie and keep you logged in for months.
Emergencies
What to do if you lose control over your email, computer, or smartphone?
Contact PrivacyDocs immediately through the 'Contact' form or by email telling which email is compromised. We will then log you out from PrivacyDocs and lock your email for three days so that you can recover from the incident.
We will ask you to verify your identity using the emergency contact details. Provide them now in the 'User settings' dialog. We generally respond during office hours, but no response times are guaranteed or should be expected. We would generally be able to recover your data from the backups if needed. We are happy to help, but we will charge you for the effort that we spend to remedy the incident (regular consultancy rate).Note, that security incidents are often leading to personal data breaches that need to be reported in 72 hours.
Why there are no passwords on PrivacyDocs?
Many Web services ask (often, long and complex) passwords to log in. With PrivacyDocs we do not use passwords because they often, actually, reduce security (the so-called 'security theater').
Think of many services that you use, which require a password, but also offer the opportunity to reset your password by email. When you reset your password, then they send you a one-time login link (same as PrivacyDocs does when you log in). An intruder who got access to your email can easily reset your password and get access to the service. In addition, an intruder who got access to your password (think of the yellow stickers on your desk) also can get access to the service. And if you use the same password for several services...
In this way, using both, a password and an opportunity to reset the password by email, only creates an additional 'key' to your system that you need to protect. In PrivacyDocs we only use the minimally-required key (your email). And we will never leak your passwords.
This approach is not unique and many others services are using it.
And what about MFA (Multi-Factor Authentication)?
Most likely, you email provider will require you to use some form of MFA, such as text (sms) messages or a separate smartphone app. At PrivacyDocs we are gaining from this because it helps ensuring your control over your email, the key communication means between PrivacyDocs and you.
We are using additional (emergency) communication means to communicate with you during security incidents. This way we use MFA when the regular authentication means could not be trusted.
It is very important not to use your MFA device (usually, your smartphone) for regular work. If an intruder gets access to your smartphone then the password reset emails and MFA text (sms) messages will go to the same smartphone. If you lose or break your smartphone then you would lose access to your MFA tokens, and would not be able to log in.
As a rule of thumb: Do not work on your mobile (we know, that is very difficult).
PrivacyDocs organizational security measures
PrivacyDocs is operated by a small team, with only two individuals accessing your data for operational and support purposes. Both are bound by non-disclosure and confidentiality agreements that include sufficient incentives to be followed.
PrivacyDocs operation and data access is taken place in the Netherlands under the Dutch law. There are no foreign contractors or vendors involved.
PrivacyDocs technical security measures
We use industry-standard technical security measures to protect your space on PrivacyDocs.
We rely on Amazon Web Services (AWS) to host PrivacyDocs and Microsoft for AI and internal emails. We use the following key security measures:
- Limited access.
- Access to production environment and your data is limited to the authorized individuals.
- Authorization and authentication.
- The authorized individuals need to authenticate using secret passwords (used by AWS or O365) and MFA devices to get access.
- Encryption in transit and at rest.
- Your data is encrypted with industry-standard means both when in transit (think of HTTPS) and at rest (think of disk and file encryption).
- AWS Dynamo DB.
- Your data is stored using AWS DynamoDB, partitioned per client, and is continuously backed up by Amazon. We crate regular off-site backups of the data as well. The backups are stored encrypted and accessible to the same individuals who manage the production environments.
- AWS Lambdas.
- Your data is processed using AWS lambdas. These are special kind of 'servers' that are created for each Web request and destroyed after the request is completed. As a result, there are no PrivacyDocs servers that can be compromised.
- Emails.
- AWS is used for all automatic emails, and Microsoft O365 is used for info@privacydocs.eu and emails inside the PrivacyDocs organisation.
- AI.
- Microsoft Azure is used as the provider of the AI engine. All data submitted to the PrivacyDocs 'Ask AI' feature will be sent to Microsoft.
- Logging in.
- When you login, we email you a single-use login link that is valid for one hour. During a login session, we store a session cookie. Both, the login link and the cookie are sufficiently long, to be considered secure, given their usage patterns.
All these measures help keeping your space on PrivacyDocs safe.