The security in Qlik Sense does not depend only on the Qlik Sense software. It also relies on the security of the environment that Qlik Sense operates in. This means that the security of, for example, the operating system and the cryptographic protocols (such as TLS/SSL) has to be set up and configured to provide the security needed for Qlik Sense.
Network security
For all Qlik Sense components to communicate with each other in a secure way, they need to build trust.
In Qlik Sense, all communication between the Qlik Sense services and clients is based on web protocols. The web protocols use Transport Layer Security (TLS) for encryption and exchange of information and keys and certificates for authentication of the communicating parties.
TLS provides a way to build encrypted tunnels between identified servers or services. The parties that communicate are identified using certificates. Each tunnel needs two certificates; one to prove to the client that it is communicating with the right server and one to prove to the server that the client is allowed to communicate with the server.
So, how to make sure that the certificates are from the same Qlik Sense trust zone? All certificates that belong to a trust zone are signed with the same signature. If the signature exists in the certificate, it is accepted as proof that the certificate belongs to the trust zone.
When the protected tunnels and the correct certificates are in place, the Qlik Sense services have a trust zone to operate within. Within the trust zone, only services that belong to the specific Qlik Sense site can communicate with each other.
The Qlik Sense clients are considered to be outside of the Qlik Sense trust zone because they often run on less trusted end-user devices. The Qlik Sense Proxy Service (QPS) can bridge the two zones and allow communication between the clients and the Qlik Sense services, if the user is authenticated to the system.
TLS-protected tunnels can be used to secure the communication between the Qlik Sense clients and the QPS. As the clients are outside of the Qlik Sense trust zone, the communication between the clients and the QPS uses a certificate with a different signature than the one used within the trust zone.
Server security
Qlik Sense uses the server operating system to gain access to resources. The operating system provides a security system that controls the use of the server resources (for example, storage, memory, and CPU). Qlik Sense uses the security system controls to protect its resources (for example, files, memory, processes, and certificates) on the server.
Through the use of access control, the security system grants access to Qlik Sense files (for example, log files, database files, certificates, and apps) only to certain users on the server.
The security system also protects the server memory, so that only authorized processes are allowed to write to the Qlik Sense part of the memory.
In addition, the security system is responsible for assigning users to processes. This is used to restrict who is allowed to interact with the Qlik Sense processes on the server. The processes are also restricted in terms of which parts of the operating system they are allowed to access.
So, by using the controls in the security system, a secure and protected environment can be configured for the Qlik Sense processes and files.
Process security
Each process executes in an environment that poses different threats to the process. In this layer of the security model, the focus is on ensuring that the software is robust and thoroughly analyzed from a security perspective.
Rugged software
For software to be considered as rugged, it must cope with all potential threats to the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of the information, and be robust when used in ways not anticipated.
Several mitigating actions have been implemented in the Qlik Sense software in order to make it rugged:
- Authorization of communication using certificates
- Validation of all external data that is sent to the system
- Encoding of content to avoid injection of malicious code
- Use of protected memory
- Encryption of data
- Audit logging
- Use of checksums
- Isolated execution of external components
- Escaping of SQL data
Threat analysis
To ensure that the Qlik Sense software is secure and rugged, threat analysis of the design has been performed as part of the development process. The following threat areas, often abbreviated as STRIDE, have been covered:
- Spoofing
- Tampering
- Repudiation
- Information disclosure
- Denial of service
- Elevation of privilege
In addition to the threat analyses, exploratory security testing has also been performed on the Qlik Sense software.
App security
The major components of the Qlik Sense app security are:
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Access control system: The access control system grants users access to the resources in Qlik Sense.
See Access control
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Data reduction: The data reduction functionality is based on the concept of section access, which is a way to dynamically change which data a user can view. This makes it possible to build apps that can be used by many users, but with different data sets that are dynamically created based on user information. The reduction of data is performed by the Qlik Sense Engine Service (QES).
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Data encryption: Sensitive data in QVF and QVD files is encrypted with customer supplied key pairs which allows you to control who gets access to your data. The encryption keys are managed through certificates, that must be stored in a certificate store for the user running the Qlik Sense Engine Service (QES).
See Data encryption
Using these components, the resources and data (that is, the content) consumed by the Qlik Sense users can be secured.
To begin setting up access control, see Designing access control.