Haystack EU 2023: Learnings and reflections from our team
If you have built search experiences, you know creating a great search experience is a never ending process: the data ...
Senior ML Engineer
If you have built search experiences, you know creating a great search experience is a never ending process: the data ...
Senior ML Engineer
Just as with a school kid who’s left unsupervised when their teacher steps outside to deal with a distraction ...
Search and Discovery writer
Back in May 2014, we added support for synonyms inside Algolia. We took our time to really nail the details ...
Technical Writer
You’re running an ecommerce site for an electronics retailer, and you’re seeing in your analytics that users keep ...
Technical Writer
What do OpenAI and DeepMind have in common? Give up? These innovative organizations both utilize technology known as transformer models ...
Sr. SEO Web Digital Marketing Manager
As a successful in-store boutique manager in 1994, you might have had your merchandisers adorn your street-facing storefront ...
Search and Discovery writer
At Algolia, our business is more than search and discovery, it’s the continuous improvement of site search. If you ...
JavaScript Library Developer
Analytics brings math and data into the otherwise very subjective world of ecommerce. It helps companies quantify how well their ...
Technical Writer
Amid all the momentous developments in the generative AI data space, are you a data scientist struggling to make sense ...
Sr. SEO Web Digital Marketing Manager
Fashion ideas for guest aunt informal summer wedding Funny movie to get my bored high-schoolers off their addictive gaming ...
Sr. SEO Web Digital Marketing Manager
Imagine you're visiting an online art gallery and a specific painting catches your eye. You'd like to find ...
Senior Software Engineer
At Algolia, our commitment to making a positive impact extends far beyond the digital landscape. We believe in the power ...
Senior Manager, People Success
In today’s post-pandemic-yet-still-super-competitive retail landscape, gaining, keeping, and converting ecommerce customers is no easy ...
Sr. SEO Web Digital Marketing Manager
There are few atmospheres as unique as that of a conference exhibit hall: the air always filled with an indescribable ...
Marketing Content Manager
To consider the question of what vectors are, it helps to be a mathematician, or at least someone who’s ...
Search and Discovery writer
My first foray into programming was writing Python on a Raspberry Pi to flicker some LED lights — it wasn’t ...
Technical Writer
How well do you know the world of modern ecommerce? With retail ecommerce sales having exceeded $5.7 trillion worldwide ...
Sr. SEO Web Digital Marketing Manager
In a world of artificial intelligence (AI), data serves as the foundation for machine learning (ML) models to identify trends ...
Director of AI Engineering
Back in the 1980s, American Tourister ran luggage ads with gorillas tossing around suitcases to demonstrate just how tough their products are. The product designers did a pretty good job ensuring resilience in the face of serious monkey (actually, ape…) business. I like the metaphor because it’s not too different for software. Similarly, SaaS applications are designed by engineers to handle all kinds of abuse — brute force attacks, data leakage, phishing, and more.
Security is about protecting data, company IP, brand reputation, and more. Globally, the average cost of a data breach is $4.35 million. Many software buyers don’t have the knowledge, resources, or insights into what security best practices are in place, and so security questions often only come up near the tail-end of the buying cycle. We feel it’s a good approach to consider the acquisition of any software with security in mind from the start.
If you’re evaluating search providers (or really any SaaS product), here are 10 questions you might want to start with to understand their security practices.
Security needs to be a part of the development planning process, not an afterthought. We are fortunate to have a dedicated security team that works with our engineers and product managers to review product architecture and related infrastructure. The team’s job is to ensure that the data flowing into the product from various possible sources and data centers — product catalogs, support-facing solutions, internal analytics, conversion events — is transported and stored securely using modern encryption technology and highest compliance standards. We also work hard to maintain transparency. For example, since 2017 we worked with the Cloud Security Alliance to continually train and certify our team on the highest standards of security, and TrustArc for ensuring data privacy. Security needs to be designed into the software from day one.
Is data stored on premises or in the cloud? Who is watching over your data, and how is it secured? Algolia is a 100% hosted solution provider. We host data on bare metal servers on every continent in 70+ data centers around the world. Customers have the option to run Algolia either in EU-based or US-based data centers fully-managed on Microsoft Azure or AWS. Data is encrypted in transit (AES-256) and customers also have the option to encrypt their data ‘at rest’ using managed-per-server keys with Algolia Vault. Our data centers are continuously monitored, managed, and tested:
All companies must comply with international and/or local laws. Or, they have customers who will only work with vendors whose services meet exacting standards. With more than 17,000 customers ranging from governments, corporations, medical enterprises and more, all with strict requirements, we have purposely designed our service to work across many public and private use cases. Today, Algolia is compliant with…
Your data is yours. So, you will want to work with providers who will manage your data with the utmost care so it’s not lost or leaked. Our services do not track your customers, and their identities stay under your control. We have a secure multi-tenant architecture — monitored 24/7 — to prevent leakage of data between our customers and continual monitoring of API access. We design our highly-available service with redundancy and backups, which allow us to provide 99.99% (and higher) reliability.
Is the provider you’re speaking with prepared for worse-case scenarios, and if so, how? Of course we do everything we can to ensure this never happens, including semi-annual independent penetration testing of our services. However, should this happen, we will quickly determine the cause, understand what data (if any) has been compromised, contact affected customers in less than 24 hours, and work to remediate the issue as soon as possible.
An interruption in service can happen for a lot of reasons — cloud provider disruption, a customer exceeding their own usage, local ISP issues, etc. How cloud vendors guarantee their services can vary widely. However, if the issue is with Algolia, our Algolia service level agreement (SLA) covers standard and premium plans with guaranteed remuneration. Should we fail to meet the stands we’ve set for ourselves, customers are eligible for credits.
Enterprise-scale software is built from thousands of components — open source and proprietary — usually with microservices for different capabilities. The orchestration of such complex systems is not without risk; a lot can go wrong as new vulnerabilities are discovered. We place a lot of effort into having the best security. For instance, it took us only a few hours after the disclosure of an OpenSSL HeartBleed vulnerability to fix it. We’re performing regular independent penetration testing and have a public bug bounty program on HackerOne that helps us ensure ongoing security.
As your needs change, you may need to switch providers. What happens to your data when you leave? Of course, we will do everything we can to keep you as a customer, but we know that’s not always possible. At Algolia, we retain information in accordance with our subscription agreements. We may also retain and use certain personal information for a reasonable period as necessary — to pursue our legitimate business interests, conduct audits, comply with our legal obligations, resolve disputes, and so forth. You’ll find it all spelled out transparently in our Privacy Policy.
It’s important to know who is coming and going and when data is in transit. Security is a shared responsibility between Algolia and our customers. On one hand, we do what we can to lock down access, and on the other we ask our customers to manage access responsibly. For example, we have controlled access to infrastructure and offer features for secure API key management, 2FA, and application permission levels. We also implement the latest best practices to ensure that your data is safe, secure, and isolated from the data of other Algolia users. However, it’s equally incumbent on our customers to follow security best practices, manage access and permissions for their users, and keep their Admin API keys secret and hidden. By managing access as a team, we can be more secure together. The terms of service customers agree to spells out their expectations for managing access and information sharing.
Security is not just managed by the security team. Everyone at an organization should be made aware of the risks and responsibilities. When everyone is made aware of the possible risks and rewards, we can provide a safer, more secure service. At Algolia, new hires are given training before accessing any systems when they’re onboarded and everyone must pass a security test each year. Our IT team also maintains administrative safeguards on company-owned equipment, ensuring the devices and applications are up-to-date. We have a shared security channel in Slack to report incidents, concerns, or just ask questions; when it comes to security, there are no stupid questions!
Of course, there’s much, much more to our security policies. Above all, as you investigate a provider’s security measures, look for transparency. For a provider to be less than transparent means, more than likely, that they’re obfuscating something important.
Here are a bunch of additional resources to learn more about security at Algolia.
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