Professional Documents
Culture Documents
User
Front End
Network
SaaS Cloud (Web) applications
Management Access
Services & APIs
Cloud software environment
PaaS
Computational Storage Communication
resources
Provider
IaaS
Cloud software infrastructure
Kernal (OS/apps)
Hardware
Facilities
The different colors in the diagram represent the different “owners” of the layers. So the
supporting (IT) infrastructure is usually maintained by an IaaS provider (such as Amazon or
Microsoft), while the cloud-specific infrastructure is managed by Informatica. The service
customer is responsible for providing user-level access control security, which is ultimately
maintained by the corporate IT department.
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As part of a comprehensive continuity-of-operations plan, Informatica employs two
separate data centers managed by different providers. Each data center acts as a failover
in case of a failure at the other. The switch to a different data center is transparent to
the Informatica customer. Informatica transfers control to the alternate data center by
rerouting DNS entries within the Internet backbone. Once the physical IP addresses
point to the secondary data center, the Internet will propagate this change through the
DNS environment. Very quickly, the secondary data center will be managing all of the
Informatica Cloud integration communications worldwide.
Data retention is another important factor. Here is the Informatica Cloud backup schedule:
1. On-site incremental disk based backups are saved on-line four times per day.
Note that only integration metadata is saved in the cloud application. Customer data is
never stored during transit.
Ideally, the cloud provider’s data centers should be geographically distributed around the
world. As of 2011, Informatica data centers are located on the U.S. East Coast and West
Coast. There are plans for non-US based data center targeted for 2012, which will provide
more global coverage and redundancy.
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Informatica hires independent security analysts to perform annual penetration tests
throughout multiple levels of the network. If a detected scan/probe/attack occurs, the
address is blocked at the border routers and alerts are sent within one hour. If the attack
is successful, this event is classified as a “security incident”. Incident response begins, which
involves immediate investigation and mitigation with all the appropriate parties.
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Secure Agent
Runs on Windows and/or Linux server
(all connections are initiated
by the secure agent outbound)
Salesforce.com
Business Data
{HTTPS/SOAP}
Salesforce
Data
Informatica Cloud
ICS Repository
Mappings
SFDC Metadata
DB Metadata
DB and SFDC conn
Administration and Design Local PC with
auth info (encrypted) Configuration & Maintenance Web Access
{HTTPS}
WS/SaaS front-end
Internet Internal
Figure 2. Overview of Informatica Cloud’s Secure Agent facilitating data integration between a local
database and Salesforce CRM and/or Force.com.
Figure 3. The Informatica Cloud Secure Agent manages data transfer and is run locally behind the
firewall or can be hosted in the cloud. No data resides on Informatica servers.
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The Informatica Cloud Secure Agent works as follows:
• Corporate IT downloads the Secure Agent and installs it as a secure Windows service
(or Linux process). The Secure Agent inherits the access privileges of the user account
that was used for installation.
• The Secure Agent communicates to Informatica Cloud through https protocol through
port 443. All communication initiated by Secure Agent is outbound, so no firewall rules
need to be changed. Built-in health check mechanisms ensure persistent connectivity to
Informatica Cloud.
• The Secure Agent downloads the integration job control information in an encrypted
format and executes the job.
• The Secure Agent then launches the engine to execute the integration job
• Data transfer happens directly from source system to target system and is not staged in
Informatica Cloud. This is an important feature of Informatica Cloud from a data security
perspective. All data resides behind the corporate firewall until it is transmitted securely
to the target.
• The Secure Agent transmits logging and monitoring information about the integration
job to Informatica Cloud.
Informatica Cloud records entitlement changes and user transactions in audit logs,
including username, date, and nature of change. The audit logs are pruned on a quarterly
basis. These logs are always available to customers in the browser UI under administration
section.
Customer Perspective
Informatica Cloud provides layered security based on organizations, licenses, users, and
roles:
• Organizations. Users connect to Informatica Cloud as members of an organization.
• Licenses. They allow organizations to access Informatica Cloud functionality. Licenses
are granted by Informatica operations to organizations. Licenses can expire at regular
intervals.
• Organization Administrator. Each organization has at least one user designated as
the administrator. The administrator creates and manages the Informatica Cloud account
for the organization. The organization administrator is responsible for creating each
user and setting up access rights to Informatica Cloud functionality based on the user
requirements.
• User logins. The organization administrator defines the password policy, including
minimum password length, minimum character mix, password reuse duration, password
expiration duration, and two-factor authentication scheme.
• User sessions. User sessions time out after 30 minutes of session inactivity.
• Roles. Role definitions allow users to access Informatica Cloud functionality. The
administrator grants roles for an organization.
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This role-based security exemplifies best practices on implementing least privilege access
at a very granular level. IT organizations will feel comfortable when setting up Informatica
Cloud because it is similar to other enterprise-class security systems. With respect to
other SaaS applications, such as Salesforce CRM, the user access credentials are stored
in encrypted format. So when the Secure Agent executes, it is able to log in to the SaaS
application with credentials as defined by the enterprise (it does not require root/SA
access).
Informatica Cloud is typically updated multiple times per year. Upgrade notices are
posted on user community sites and emailed to customers at least five business days
prior to the implementation - scheduled maintenance windows are 7:00 – 11:00 p.m.
Eastern Time. Security-related hot fixes are evaluated for their applicability to the
production environment on a regular basis. Critical patches are applied immediately and
other patches are updated monthly. The Informatica Quality Assurance (QA) group will
verify all code check in. The code is certified as a release to operations build. Software is
delivered to the staging site (which is a replica of the production environment). Then QA
performs infrastructure, networking, and functional testing for at least 48 hours. After
successful testing, the software migrates to the production environment, with full rollback
procedures. The Informatica operations group communicates to the customer base
throughout the process. As of 2011, Informatica Cloud has not incurred any production
delays due to an upgrade. Nor has it had to roll back to a previous version.
Updates to the Secure Agent are also managed from the cloud. The stateless nature of
the Informatica Cloud Secure Agent means that it can be replaced/upgraded at any time,
without disrupting operations. The Secure Agent checks for upgrades during the polling
process. Available updates are then automatically downloaded and installed.
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Level 6: Data Transmission Layer
Transmitting data is where the rubber meets the road for a cloud integration solution.
During transmission, many things can go wrong, such as application unavailability, DBMS
issues, network failure, network congestion, and potential “man in the middle”/sniffer
attacks. Fortunately, the Informatica Cloud service addresses these points of weakness.
The Secure Agent checks for application, DBMS, and network availability, when initiating
connections. Availability checking is part of the overall Informatica PowerCenter execution
capability. The Secure Agent also has built-in network resiliency checks for congestion.
If there are any issues, full audit logs are published from the Secure Agent back to the
Informatica Cloud repository.
The primary defense against man in the middle or sniffing attacks depends on ensuring
transport encryption, integrity, and authentication of the communication channel. For
example, message security authentication implies signing and verifying a message (using
XML Signature), ensuring integrity (using XML hash messages), and implementing message-
level encryption (using XML Encryption). Informatica Cloud uses SSL (with 128 bit
certificates), SSH, and IPSec protocols for data transmission and remote access over public
networks. Data transmission implements AES encryption.
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Summary
This report detailed how Informatica Cloud addresses cloud integration from a security
perspective. Cloud integration can be implemented in a variety of ways. Informatica Cloud
seeks to minimize the exposure of corporate data, allowing IT departments to have high
confidence that proprietary data will not be exposed on the Internet. At all levels of
the solution, from data center to data transmission, Informatica Cloud implements best
practices that achieve a secure integration experience. The Secure Agent connects directly
from source to target systems – customer data is never staged or stored in Informatica
Cloud. The operations manager provides both line-of-business and IT departments
with secure access to integration jobs. This access furnishes a flexible and controlled
environment to manage integration scenarios. Lastly, data is encrypted during transmission
and is resilient against Internet-based attacks. Data security ranks as one of the biggest
challenges when moving to the cloud. The need to integrate disparate systems is not
disappearing. So the savvy IT department needs to deploy a secure cloud integration
solution to meet today’s business challenges. Informatica delivers such a secure integration
solution.
About Informatica
Informatica Corporation (NASDAQ: INFA) is the world’s number one independent
provider of data integration software. Organizations around the world rely on Informatica
to gain a competitive advantage with timely, relevant and trustworthy data for their top
business imperatives. Worldwide, over 4,440 enterprises depend on Informatica for
data integration, data quality and big data solutions to access, integrate and trust their
information assets residing on-premise and in the Cloud. For more information, call +1
888 345 4639 in in the U.S., or visit www.InformaticaCloud.com. Connect with Informatica
at http://www.facebook.com/InformaticaCorporation, http://www.linkedin.com/company/
informatica and http://twitter.com/InformaticaCorp.
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Appendix – Service-Level Agreements and Audit Reports
Service-level agreements have become one of the important factors to consider when
evaluating cloud service providers. In some cases they can be rather toothless or not
provide much compensation in case of failure.
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Informatica Cloud Customer Service and Support Details
Of course, there may come a time when the IT department needs to call for help from
its cloud integration provider. Just as in other outsourcing decisions, understanding
support parameters is key to success. Support can be measured in terms of availability,
response time, and escalation process. For example, the Informatica Cloud Help Desk is
available 12x5 for noncritical issues, and 24x7 for critical issues. The hours of operation for
noncritical issues are 6:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. Pacific Time, Monday through Friday, excluding
Informatica Cloud holidays. Informatica Cloud will respond within four hours for critical
incidents and one business day for noncritical. When Informatica Cloud becomes aware
of an outage, the impacted enterprises will be contacted. Likewise, when Informatica
Cloud needs assistance diagnosing on-premise connectivity, Informatica Cloud will need to
contact individuals at the enterprise site. For example, if an enterprise reports inability to
access the Informatica Cloud login page, yet Informatica Cloud can confirm that the login
page can be reached from other external sites on the Internet at large, Informatica Cloud
will communicate with the enterprise’s desktop and/or network administrators.
In case a problem is not resolved via level 1 help desk support, Informatica Cloud posts
the following escalation process (among others):
Severity-1 Production site is down.
Impact Customers lost connectivity to Informatica Cloud production
site, and no workaround is immediately available.
Target Services Restoration 30 minutes from initial alert/report
Report to Internal Support/ Immediate
Web Site
Report to External Support/ 10 minutes after service is restored
Trust Site
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© 2011 Netspective Communications LLC 52304 (10/14/2011)
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