Kortical’s Data Security
Overview
At Kortical (which includes K-Chat & KorticalChat) we take the protection of customer data extremely seriously. This Kortical Security Policy describes the organisational and technical measures Kortical implements platform wide designed to prevent unauthorised access, use, alteration or disclosure of customer data. The Kortical services operate on the Google Cloud Platform (“GCP”); this policy describes activities of Kortical within its instance on GCP unless otherwise specified.
Security Team
Our security is led by Andy Gray (CEO & Co-Founder) who has years of experience in delivering the highest security and up-time at Barclays banks, EA Games and more. The senior leadership team oversees the security and it is communicated top down to all employees who also know their role in designing, delivering and operating secure and robust infrastructure.
Best Practices
Incident Response Plan
- We have implemented a formal procedure for security events and have educated all our staff on our policies.
- If a security event is detected it will be escalated to our emergency alias, teams are paged, notified and assembled to rapidly address the event.
- After a security event is fixed we will write up a post-mortem analysis.
- The analysis will be reviewed in person, distributed across the company and includes action items that will make the detection and prevention of a similar event easier in the future.
- Kortical will notify you, within 24 hours, in writing upon verification of a security breach of the Kortical services that affects your data. Notification will describe the breach and the status of Kortical’s investigation.
Build Process Automation
- We have functioning, frequently used automation in place so that we can safely and reliably rollout changes to both our application and operating platform within minutes.
- We typically deploy code daily, so we have high confidence that we can get a security fix out quickly when required.
Infrastructure
- All of our services run in the cloud. Kortical does not run our own routers, load balancers, DNS servers, or physical servers.
- All of our services and data are hosted in GCP facilities and protected by GCP security, as described at https://cloud.google.com/trust-center/security?hl=en
- Kortical services have been built with disaster recovery in mind.
- All of our servers are within our own virtual private cloud (VPC) with network access control lists (ACL’s) that prevent unauthorised requests getting to our internal network.
- Kortical uses a backup solution for datastores that contain customer data.
Data
- Kortical services and data are hosted in GCP in the UK - unless requested by a client to host them elsewhere.
- Kortical platform stores customer data in an individual datastore. In KorticalChat and K-Chat customer data is stored in multi-tenant datastores. However strict privacy controls exist in our application code that are designed to ensure data privacy and to prevent one customer from accessing another customer’s data (i.e., logical separation). We have many unit and integration tests in place to ensure these privacy controls work as expected. These tests are run every time our codebase is updated and even one single test failing will prevent new code being shipped to production. If a customer wishes to have individual tenancy for Chat then that can be arranged.
- Each Kortical system used to process customer data is adequately configured and pathed using commercially-reasonable methods according to industry-recognized system-hardening standards.
- Kortical engages certain subprocessors to process customer data. These are listed below.
- We delete all customer data upon account ending, unless requested otherwise.
Data Transfer
- All data sent to or from Kortical is encrypted in transit using 256-bit encryption.
- Our API and application endpoints are TLS/SSL only and score an "A+" rating on SSL Labs' tests. This means we only use strong cipher suites and have features such as HSTS and Perfect Forward Secrecy fully enabled.
- We also encrypt data at rest using an industry-standard AES-256 encryption algorithm.
Large Language Models
Authentication
- Kortical is served 100% over https. Kortical runs a zero-trust corporate network.
- There are no corporate resources or additional privileges from being on Kortical’s network.
- We have two-factor authentication (2FA) and strong password policies on GitHub, Google, GCP, and Kortical to ensure access to cloud services are protected.
Permissions and Admin Controls
- Kortical enables permission levels to be set for any employees with access to Kortical.
- They are controlled tightly and they are audited quarterly to ensure that only the relevant people have the right access.
Application Monitoring
- On an application level, we produce audit logs for all activity.
- All access to Kortical applications is logged and audited.
- All actions taken on production consoles or in the Kortical application are logged.
Security Audits and Certifications
- Koritcal is ISO27001 accredited, which is audited annually and has had no major corrections.
- Kortical has had no data leaks or data incidents.
- We engage with third party Pen Testers to annually test our platform security.
Data Subprocessors
Kortical is a data processor and engages specific onward subprocessors that may have to process personal data submitted to Kortical’s services by the controller. This list may be updated from time to time.
- Google Cloud Platform - Hosting, storing and processing customer data
- Stripe - payment processor for KorticalChat & K-Chat
- Hubspot - CRM and marketing emails provider
- OpenAI - Provides large language model processing via APIs for customers using Kortical’s Gen AI products
- Microsoft - so we can host OpenAI models in the EU
