We realize that email contains your most personal and private data. So we take security and privacy of our user’s data extremely seriously.
Limitation of information on our servers
- By design, we limit the information that is held on our servers. Your email never resides on our servers, except for the moment that we send your SaneReminder email back to you (and even then we try to measure in seconds the time that any one email is on our disks).
- Also by design, SaneBox acts as a client so that if our service should be down for a minute or two (we shoot for “5 9’s” of uptime, 99.999%), your email will continue to be delivered to your Inbox. The only side effect of our being down would be that your unimportant email will linger in your Inbox, mocking you.
- We approach security as 4 layers. Each layer, while as impervious as we can make it, is backstopped by the other layers.
Physical security
SaneBox uses an accredited services provider which means we take security, data integrity and business continuity very seriously. We insist on the operators providing the same physical access restrictions and controls to meet and surpass ISO standards. We require all of our Data Center operators to have and maintain ISO accreditation and to operate at the highest standards of physical security.
These standards include:
- Access approval and recording at the perimeter, the building and the Data center suites
- Pre-approved access requests via our ticketing system
- ID checks at reception with photo-id requirement (passport/driving license)
- 24/7 CCTV and on-site security monitoring
- Biometric and key-fob controls at all entry/exit points so that all movement is recorded
- Access control expiry (date and time)
- Roof to ceiling enclosures to prevent unauthorised physical access within the Data Center suites
- Racks are locked at all times and require a staff member to unlock them.
- Cabling is secured within overhead cable trays
Network Security
- The service and database machines do not accept any connections from the public internet. A user must establish a VPN connection to our private network. A VPN uses data encryption and other security mechanisms to prevent unauthorized users from accessing data.
- This channel is a temporary direct session and is commonly referred to as tunneling.
- The user is required to provide individual cryptographically strong SSH keys to gain access to a bastion host. The bastion host is a powerful server with improved security measures and custom software. It undergoes regular maintenance and audit.
- SSH is a ubiquitous protocol that provides authentication, encryption and data integrity to secure network communications. It offers encrypted connections for a variety of purposes, including logging into remote machines, transferring files, setting up encrypted tunnels and more. Bastion hosts are specifically built systems that are designed and configured to protect the management plane of the cloud.
- Once connected to the bastion host, the user has to provide SSH keys to gain access to one of the service machines. All such access is logged and routinely audited. Finally, all data on the server is secured with bank-quality encryption.
Data Security
- Your email is never resident on our servers. Our software cannot see the content of your emails, since the body of your emails will never touch our servers. Your email credentials / authentication information is bank-quality encrypted in the database. An industrial strength passcode must be entered to even start up the software. This means that someone could walk off with the entire database and the entire code base and still not get access to a single authentication credential. This master startup passcode is known to only a few trusted employees.
- SaneBox identifies the important emails in your email inbox. The servers that calculate the importance of your emails and label them are unavailable for inbound connections from the public internet. The calculation of importance is done by an algorithmic engine. Only the engine looks at the headers of your emails and your social network connections, not people. Our engineers work on the algorithmic engine, not the email.
Trusted Personnel
- SaneBox Inc. maintains a detailed internal security policy issued to all employees and reviewed frequently. The employees are required to conduct themselves in a manner consistent with the policy. We only hire people who come highly recommended and referred by our trusted contacts. Prior to hire, we will verify an individual’s education and previous employment, and perform extensive reference checks.
- Employees are provided with security training as part of new hire orientation. SaneBox provides confidential reporting mechanisms to ensure that employees can anonymously report any ethics violation they may witness. Hence, it is the most vetted subset of our trusted employees that even access that final encryption key.
European Union Representative
VeraSafe has been appointed as SaneBox’s representative in the European Union for data protection matters, pursuant to Article 27 of the General Data Protection Regulation of the European Union. VeraSafe can be contacted in addition to SaneBox only on matters related to the processing of personal data. To make such an inquiry, please contact VeraSafe using this contact form.
Alternatively, VeraSafe can be contacted at:
Matthew Joseph
Zahradníčkova 1220/20A
Prague 15000
Czech Republic
VeraSafe Ireland Ltd
Unit 3D
North Point House
North Point Business Park
New Mallow Road
Cork T23AT2P
Ireland
Regulatory Oversight
If you are an individual in the European Union whose personal data we process, and we’re unable to resolve a privacy-related complaint you lodge with SaneBox, you may also have the right to lodge that complaint with a data protection regulator in your EU Member State.
Conclusion
We take security and privacy of user data extremely seriously. In fact, it is the top priority in any business decision. When faced with a choice to offer a valuable feature that would even marginally increase the security and privacy risk, it is our company policy to not move forward with that feature. We spend time each month looking for ways to secure the system further.
Always remember that someone could look over your shoulder someday while you type your password. Or someone could get you to click on a phishing email and get you to enter your credentials to a phishing site.
So you should always be as careful as SaneBox!