Security

One of the most import concerns for any studio is protecting their intellectual property. It’s critically important that data, teams, and devices are protected in this remote and distributed era of collaboration.

Mudstack is dedicated to protecting the studios and teams that rely on our cloud and desktop solutions to streamline their collaboration and productivity. We do this through effective controls that ensure confidentiality of intellectual property, integrity of stored and shared files, and high availability of data through our managed cloud service.

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Ways Mudstack protects your intellectual property

Mudstack relies on multiple mechanisms to reduce risk and protect your business. The primary mechanisms employed by Mudstack are our secure system architecture, access controls through roles and permissions at the account and workspace level, as well as adopting proactive business processes for our employees and partners.

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Our secure system architecture

Mudstack’s customer facing interfaces, our Web Client, Desktop Application, and REST API, are backed by a secure architecture hosted by Amazon Web Services. Our secure backend works behind the scenes, enforcing secure access to, cloud synchrozination of, and high availability of files and metadata.

Mudstack’s secure architecture is made up of the following components:

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File Storage Server

Using a combination of AWS S3, AWS Cloudfront, and Signed URLs, all files managed by Mudstack require authorized access to generate a Signed URL, are available on the network edge, and are only available to access for a short period of time after which the Signed URL will expire.

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Metadata Databases

All account and workspace metadata stored by Mudstack is encrypted at rest and keyed by cryptographically universally unique identifiers (UUIDs). This dramatically reduces the risk of unauthorized access to metadata, makes it next to impossible to guess ownership or providence of data in individual payloads, and drives the multi-tenant implementation of our platform.

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Authorization Server

Mudstack relies on Auth0 by Okta to manage our authentication flow. When a user authenticates via SSO or email auth flows, Auth0 signs and distributes a JSON Webtoken to that user. This JSON Webtoken is used by our clients to manage our internal authorization. Using this workflow, our platform has to simply authenticate that the JSON Webtoken was signed with a valid private key (managed by Auth0). Authorization takes place within our API itself, but for authentication we rely on Auth0 for SSO and token via email to authenticate identity.

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Mudstack API

Mudstack’s REST API empowers all of our user facing interfaces. Every endpoint in our API requires a JSON Webtoken, which is first checked for authenticity. This cannot be avoided and is required for our cloud to access tenant metadata.

The identity attached to the JSON Webtoken is correlated to a specific email, which is connected to any number of accounts and workspaces within our platform. Every account or workspace endpoint of our REST API requires the account and workspace to be specified as part of the request headers.

Each request submitted this way triggers a cascading series of authorization checks, ensuring Account Roles and Workspace Roles allow for the request and also ensuring that the resources being requested or mutated belong to the specified account or workspace.

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SSL/TLS

All network communication to, from, and inside of Mudstack’s secure environment are encrypted using Secure Sockets Layer (SSL)/Transport Layer Security (TLS), establishing a secure connection between interfaces. Mudstack relies on Amazon Web Services to deploy our SSL Certificates.

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Virtual Private Cloud

All of Mudstack’s core infrastructue and environments are isolated within a virtual network hosted by Amazon Web Services. The majority of the infrastructue within our Virtual Private Cloud (VPC), is hidden behind Private Subnets, unable to be connected to from outside of the VPC itself.

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Access controls through roles and permissions

Using a combination of account and workspace roles, Mudstack enables your organization to control access to your projects and intellectual property.

Account administrators can easily manage who has overall access to the account, and what level of access they have through Artist, Review, Admin, and Owner roles.

Account admins can create and manage workspaces, further segmenting users and their access to specific content. Workspace roles are duplicate of account roles, and in many cases require the corresponding role on the account (i.e a member of a workspace can only have the Artist role if they are already an Artist on the account).

The available roles, and their rights, are outlined in the above diagram.

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Proactive business processes

Mudstack leverages industry standard practices to ensure that our employees are held to the high ethical standards, have access to appropriate training, and are aware of the liabilities we carry as a platform provider.

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Employee policies

All Mudstack employees are required to sign non-disclosure agreements and receive security training as part of their onboarding. Only individuals that have completed these procedures are granted logical access to the corporate environment as required by their job responsibilities. In addition, Mudstack provides ongoing security awareness training and resources to each employee.

Employee access to Mudstack environments is maintained through a combination of our PEO and Amazon Web Services Identity and Access Management (IAM). In addition, our internal policies require employees accessing production and corporate environments to adhere to best practices for the creation and storage of SSH private keys.

Mudstack utilizes internal policies that prohibit employees from arbitrarily accessing user files and restricts access to metadata and other information about user accounts. Unless explicitly approved in writing by an administrator of an account, or backed by a signed non-disclosure agreement between Mudstack and the customer, mudstack employees will not directly access or manipulate customer files.

Employee access to any and all systems and information is promptly revoked when an employee leaves Mudstack, but any agreements, especially non-disclosure agreements signed by the employee, are still valid post employment.

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Internal access to production systems

All access to production systems within Mudstack is managed with unique SSH key pairs. Mudstack has policies and procedures in place that ensure the proper protection and rotation of SSH keys. All SSH keys are revoked when employees leave Mudstack.

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File and metadata syncing

Mudstack offers best-in-class file syncing, ensuring fast and responsive file transfers and anywhere access to data across devices. Mudstack selectively synchronizes content on devices based on applicable permissions. Mudstack’s synchronization is also highly resilient, maintining local file management regardless of internet access and resuming cloud synchronization when access is restored.

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Remote wiping of files metadata

When users leave a team or have their access revoked, Mudstack’s desktop application will ensure that synchronized metadata is removed from any devices that were synchronized, on next initialization / synchronization of the desktop application.

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Audit of account and workspace activity

Mudstack maintains an audit history of all activity taken within enterprise accounts and workspaces. Mudstack is able to provide these audits to account owners and administrators on request, and as part of the account administration interface.

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Passwordless security

Mudstack is a passwordless system, relying on SSO and email authentication to manage access to accounts and workspaces. This means that Mudstack does not have any access to or responsibility over managing or maintaining user passwords.

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Privacy

Mudstack’s Privacy Policy is available here Mudstack’s Privacy Policy, Customer Terms of Service, User Terms of Service, and Acceptable Use Policy all provide notice of the following terms.

• What kind of data we collect and why.
• With whom we may share information.
• How we protect this data and how long we retain it.
• Where we keep and transmit your data.
• What happens if the policy changes or if you have questions.

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Transparency around law enforcement

Mudstack is committed to transparency in handling law enforcement requests for user information, as well as the number and types of those requests. Mudstack verifies all data requests to make sure they comply with the law and is committed to giving users notice, as permissted by law, when their accounts are identfified in a law enforcement request.

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Incident response

Mudstack is diligent in our efforts to provide both a stable and secure platform experience. In support of this, Mudstack has policies and procedures in place to address any issues that arise regarding service availability, data integrity, and platform security.

As part of these procedures Mudstack:

• Responds promptly to potential incidents.
• Actively triages severity of incidents.
• Executes measures to both contain and resolve issues.
• Preserves all evidence gathered in regards to any issues.
• Communicates directly with impacted customers.