Data Security Protection

Participants may be asked to submit general information about themselves when completing the survey. This information may include, for example: their views about their employer, age, managerial level, gender, or length of service. Most such data is collected in the form of responses to the Likert scale (strongly agree, agree, neither agree nor disagree, disagree, strongly disagree), though other data is collected via multiple choice ‘tick boxes’ and free-text fields. Multiple choice questions include a ‘prefer not to say’ response.

No, all data is aggregated and anonymized removing any Personal Identifiable Information (PII) before being shared with your organization and any third parties such as Practitioners, delivery partners and other administrators. For the protection of small groups where data trends could be interpreted and linked back to individual submissions, aggregated group data is not shown until there are at least seven responses in the group in question.

Survey data, including personal data, is stored securely within Amazon Web Services. The entire data application (instances, databases, snapshots, backups) is stored within the EU-West-1 (Dublin) data centres, and so adheres to EU controls limiting storage within the EEA. Direct access to the data (databases, snapshots) is limited to senior database architects using asymmetric key-based authentication, and further secured with strict ACLs requiring access through secure Cisco VPNs. Our architects are all security cleared with an Enhanced DBS and have all been involved in the IIP projects for more than three years.

Access to servers is restricted with ACLs, Security Groups, and iptables for instance-specific controls. Backups are run nightly and replicated to a S3 bucket in an AWS region (eu-west-1 – Dublin).

For further information on AWS security, including physical access control, auto-replication (redundancy), hypervisor security, and power/infrastructure redundancy, please see: https://aws.amazon.com/compliance/.

Application passwords are managed using Drupal – passwords are salted and re-hashed multiple times. Plain-text passwords are never stored in the database. Brute-force attacks are mitigated by auto-blocking login attempts after five failed attempts. Once logged-in, the system supports full RBAC, with minimum-granted permissions (user permissions are granted only when needed for a user account, rather than granting system-wide access).

All communications with the site are via HTTPS, using HSTS and modern cipher suites (TLS1.0+). Ciphers are reviewed regularly to ensure security compliance. The system scores the top mark (A+) with independent access check from SSL Labs(https://www.ssllabs.com/ssltest/analyze.html?d=www.investorsinpeople.com

Shortly after an online survey closes it must be archived in order to reveal full results data. Once a survey has been archived, personal names and email addresses are anonymized using asterisks and the email body is wiped. This process occurs weekly and is irreversible.

Data is transferred between IIP web systems, including CRM, website and survey platform, using custom built APIs (e.g. between Roden & Gene); these APIs are not publicly documented which provides a layer of security through associated obscurity.
Data is encrypted during transit (both between servers and between web server and client) using industry-leading HTTPS configurations.
All API transactions are completed at server level; not through Javascript or other frontend code, so cannot be “sniffed” by code inspection from publicly visible code.

Yes. Surveys operating using only ‘open access’ links do not require name/email address data.

In terms of account management, the following users have access to an organization’s data:

• Development Partner Organization
• HIP Head Office admins (assigned and given access by the development partner or other IIP Head Office admins)
• Administrators from the specific Delivery Partner that works with the client (assigned and given access by the Development Partner or other IIP Head Office admins
• The client’s Practitioner (assigned, given access, and /or removed by the Delivery Partner admin) *
  * Please note: Practitioner access to ‘Manage Emails’ page may be removed.

Permissions are managed in house – as part of the new starter process, staff are added to the platform and permission levels set in line with their role.

All data is for the sole purpose of providing the services to the organization that is undertaking the survey or other associated project. However, for the purposes of providing the Survey product only, it is sometimes necessary for us to share/make accessible personal data and/or email data with third party organizations.

We use an external Development Partner Organization to build and maintain our online platforms and sometimes to resolve issues with the site. As such, they require access to a minimum amount of personal data. As part of their contract with us, they are subject to an NDA agreement, which binds them by confidentiality and data privacy rules.