Application Security
Application Security
Authentication
Local Accounts
Toucan has its own database of users. Basic administrative and viewer accounts are provided when the server is installed.
For each of our clients, Toucan uses a dedicated database, which ensures that no user account is shared across our different customers.
Local Password Storage
Toucan server never stores the password in plain text! We use the PBDFK2 algorithm to hash them, which consists of a thousand iterations of a salted SHA2.
Local Password Policy
We force users to respect the following rules when creating or modifying their passwords:
a password's length must be more than 8 characters
a password mustn't contain a user's login
a password mustn't be in a list of basic keywords (based on the list of the worst passwords, e.g.
1233456789orquertyuiop)
Anti-bruteforce Mechanism
We use crowdsec to prevent SSH or HTTP brute-force attacks on all our servers. When a malicious IP address is detected, a ban is applied all over our infrastructure.
We have further mechanisms in our infrastructure to prevent denial of service attacks.
Administrative Account
We provide an administrative account that has access to a panel allowing:
review of the authorized accounts and their privileges
deletion of accounts
modification of accounts
We enforce reinforced password security for these accounts with the following rules on top of the basic policy:
12 characters minimum
a mix of lowercase or uppercase letters, special characters and digits
Single Sign On (SSO)
Toucan can act as a Service Provider (SP), allowing users to connect using your Identity Provider(IdP).
We support the standard SAML2. Specific connectors to other authentication systems could be developed and therefore purchased separately.
We need the following configuration fields to be able to use your IdP:
entityIdsingleSignOnServiceurlx509cert
We'll then provide a metadata XML file or a URL with the information to be whitelisted in your IdP.
Session Management
The backend exposes its endpoints following the REST conventions, meaning it's stateless. The frontend (consuming the API) therefore sends its authentication token at each request for validation.
Authentication Tokens
We provide an endpoint to generate these tokens when a user logs in.
Tokens are JSON Web Tokens. They replace the session information usually stored in cookies.
The token is signed server-side using the HMAC-SHA256 algorithm with a highly secured secret of 40 characters. This secret is specific for each of our clients. This ensures that if the secret of one of our clients is compromised, the rest of our clients remain safe.
This token is valid for 30 days by default, at the end of which users must enter their credentials again. This is particularly adapted to mobile and tablet use. This duration can be modified if requested to match other security policies.
Access Control
Permissions are defined by user group, per App. These permissions act like masks on the data rows available in the small-app: it's a query that will be executed along with each query that users execute.
Log Events
Every user's action on the Toucan platform is logged such as:
loading of new data
processing of data
releasing new versions of data to users
successful and failed login attempts
Logs are available in JSON format and stamped with the date and time.
Persistent Storage Segmentation
Toucan's server stores its objects in MongoDB. It uses:
a database for users and small-apps list
a database for each small-app to store its configuration, styles, etc.
The server needs to be authenticated by MongoDB with the readWriteAnyDatabase role.
Each of our clients have a dedicated MongoDB instance for the storage of their small-apps. See the DB infrastructure description for further information.
Last updated
