Security Configuration and Programming Guidance

Question

I'm a security person. I have a non-profit that wants to use CiviCRM. What are the nitty-gritty details that I need to know? I will handle the hard technical stuff for them. The only information of value they are trying to protect is user real name and email address. But, they are considered very sensitive and high value. No money is exchanged with users. Their activity history is not considered sensitive, just the fact they are associated with the site. There will be millions of users and high site visibility.

Thank You

Answer 1

CiviCRM is a good system if you want your data to remain secure. I would recommend installing on a hardened server following the normal instructions, and ensure you keep the security patches for your CMS and CiviCRM applied when they come out. Drupal, WordPress and Joomla! all have security announcement lists you can subscribe to. See https://civicrm.org/security for CiviCRM's.

During configuration you will want to ensure that the permissions are configured to prevent inappropriate access to data (eg see http://wp46.demo.civicrm.org/wp-admin/admin.php?page=CiviCRM&q=civicrm%2Fadmin%2Faccess%2Fwp-permissions&reset=1 after logging with user demo password demo). For example, CiviCRM: view all contacts and CiviCRM: edit all contacts should be reserved to Administrative users, and CiviCRM: skip IDS check should be disabled for all users (IDS is Intrusion Detection System).

Answer 2

I think this is more a question on how to set up your configuration (which I am no expert on so I will not get into that) rather than programming in CiviCRM?