Security and data residency
Where geospatial survey data is kept, who inside an organisation may open it, and what this beta does not yet do. We hold no third-party security certification and claim none.
Where is survey data stored?
- Your survey data is stored in AWS Mumbai, India, whichever country your firm is in. Backups are copied to AWS Hyderabad, also in India. Survey data is stored only in India.
- Databases, uploaded files and published releases are encrypted at rest. Connections to GISweaver are encrypted in transit.
- Everything is served over HTTPS.
- The India cell’s infrastructure logs are kept in India for 180 days, and we report cyber incidents to CERT-In as its Directions require.
The disclosed exceptions
Four operational exceptions to that residency are disclosed in the privacy policy. None carries survey data or spatial coordinates.
| Service | Data | Provider |
|---|---|---|
| Outbound email | Transactional email | Cloudflare’s email service |
| Staff console | Account, billing, membership and support records that our staff read | Cloudflare |
| Operational monitoring | Redacted operational telemetry, sent to Alonstech’s monitoring host | Cloudflare |
| Our mailboxes | Correspondence to our published mailboxes | Google Workspace |
The policy’s sub-processor table is the full list of third parties and says where each one holds what.
Who may open what
Access is scoped at three levels: the organisation, a branch (a part of your organisation, such as an office, with its own projects) and a project. There are five roles at organisation level and three at each of the others. A request is authorised against the act it is trying to perform rather than against a role name.
Roles are enforced on every plan. Creating new roles is a plan capability: where a plan does not include Roles and permissions, the roles and limits the organisation has already set keep applying, and its people can still review and remove access. A change of plan never gives anybody more access. The plans page states what each plan includes.
One organisation’s files reach another only when the organisation holding them chooses to send them — a delivery, or a project share or a client review where the sender allows the download — and the receiving organisation reads them signed in to its own account, or through an expiring link that opens with no account and that the sender can end. Anyone holding an unbound link can open it until it expires or is ended; a sender can bind a link to one email address, which then needs a one-time code. There is no cross-organisation write.
Second factor
Any account can enrol an authenticator app: six-digit codes on a thirty-second period, ten single-use recovery codes issued at enrolment, and a lock-out after repeated wrong codes. It is available to every customer account and strongly recommended for administrators; it is not currently mandatory for customers.
For Alonstech staff it is not optional. A staff sign-in needs a code from the second factor, and an operator who has not set one up can do nothing in the staff console but set one up, change their password or sign out.
What is checked, and what is not
GISweaver checks upload type and checksum separately from malware scanning. Original files normally need a scan reporting no threats before another organisation or a link recipient can download them. A detected threat blocks handoff. Pending, failed or unsupported scans also block handoff, except for the narrow size exception below.
An original LAS/LAZ point cloud, TIFF raster, DXF drawing or GeoJSON file above the malware scanner’s size limit may be handed over only after structural validation and conversion, with a label saying it was too large to scan and checked as a valid file of its type. Type validation is not malware clearance. Generated map layers, tiles and elevation grids are GISweaver outputs from validated input and are not malware-scanned originals.
What does happen: a ZIP is opened and metered for entry count, expansion and path traversal before it is accepted, and LAS, LAZ, GeoJSON and DXF each have a structural validator of their own.
Certifications
We hold none, and we do not describe ourselves as compliant with a standard nobody has assessed us against. What is written above is what the deployment does, and each statement can be checked against the terms of service and the privacy policy.
Questions firms ask about this
- Where is our survey data kept?
- In Amazon Web Services’ Mumbai region, India. Survey data is stored only in India.
- Does anything leave that region?
- Backups are copied to AWS Hyderabad, also in India. A few operational services, such as outbound email and our mailboxes, work outside India; none carries survey data or spatial coordinates. The privacy policy lists every one.
- Can another organisation see our files?
- Only when the organisation holding them chooses to send them — a delivery, or a project share or a client review where the sender allows the download — and the receiving organisation reads them signed in to its own account, or through an expiring link that opens with no account and that the sender can end. Anyone holding an unbound link can open it until it expires or is ended; a sender can bind a link to one email address, which then needs a one-time code. There is no cross-organisation write.
- Are uploaded files scanned for malware?
- GISweaver checks upload type and integrity separately from malware scanning. Original files normally require a scan reporting no threats before handoff; threats, pending scans and failed or unsupported scans block handoff. The size exception permits structurally validated and converted LAS/LAZ, TIFF, DXF and GeoJSON originals above the scanner limit, labelled as too large to scan. Type validation is not malware clearance. Generated map layers, tiles and elevation grids are outputs from validated input, not malware-scanned originals.
- Is a second factor required?
- Any account can enrol an authenticator app, and it is strongly recommended for administrators; it is not currently mandatory for customers. For Alonstech staff it is not optional — an operator who has not set one up can do nothing in the staff console but set one up, change their password or sign out.
- Do you hold a security certification?
- No. We hold no third-party security certification, and we do not describe ourselves as meeting a standard nobody has assessed us against. Every statement on this page can be checked against the terms of service and the privacy policy.
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