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Infrastructure and Security Standards

Infrastructure

Cloud Architecture

The Forma Cloud service is delivered through a modern, resilient, and fully managed cloud infrastructure built on Amazon Web Services (AWS). The platform is deployed in AWS data centers located within the European Union (Ireland), with optional database mirroring available in Italy when required.

  • Our application layer runs on a Kubernetes-based architecture designed for high availability and elastic scalability. Workloads are distributed across multiple nodes that automatically scale up or down in response to real-time demand, ensuring consistent performance even during peak usage. All traffic is routed through AWS Global Accelerator to optimize connectivity and reduce latency for users worldwide.
  • The entire environment is secured within an isolated Virtual Private Cloud (VPC), complemented by an AWS Web Application Firewall (WAF) that provides protection from common web threats such as SQL injection, cross-site scripting, and denial-of-service attempts.
  • Load balancing mechanisms ensure even distribution of application requests across all active nodes. Two static IPs are exposed.
  • Persistent data is stored in an encrypted Aurora (RDS) cluster that provides automatic failover, multi-node read scalability.
  • Application files are maintained in a durable and automatically scalable Amazon EFS shared file system, while Redis/Valkey is used as an in-memory datastore for session management and caching.
  • The entire infrastructure is provisioned and managed through Terraform, following Infrastructure-as-Code (IaC) principles. This ensures repeatable deployments, strict version control, and a consistent configuration across environments.
  • Continuous monitoring, automated alerting, backup procedures, and business continuity measures support the reliability of the service and help maintain guaranteed availability levels.

Physical Security

The Forma Cloud Services relies on AWS who is responsible, in accordance with the AWS Shared Responsibility
Model (available at https://aws.amazon.com/compliance/shared-responsibility-model), for implementing controls for
the physical security of data center facilities, backup media, and other physical systems, providing comprehensive and
state-of-the-art security capabilities (available at https://aws.amazon.com/compliance/data-center/controls).

Information Protection and Security Standards

Backup

Backup Policies

  • Daily Backup
    • Automatically runs at 5:00 AM UTC
    • Retention: 7 days
  • Weekly Backup
    • Automatically runs on Saturdays at 5:00 AM UTC
    • Retention: 4 months (120 days)
  • Monthly Backup
    • Automatically runs on the first Saturday of the month at 5:00 AM UTC
    • Retention: 3 years (1095 days)

Access Control

  • Backup access limited via specific IAM roles
  • MFA required for critical operations
  • Service Role: AWSBackupDefaultServiceRole with minimal permissions
  • Full audit trail on AWS CloudTrail

Data storage and Localization

Geographic Location

  • Primary Location: AWS eu-west-1 (Dublin, Ireland)
  • All data and backups remain within the European Union (GDPR compliant)
  • No data transfer outside the EU

Redundancy

  • Multi-AZ Architecture (3 independent Availability Zones)
  • Backups are automatically replicated across multiple AZs
  •  Storage: AWS EFS and Amazon Aurora with synchronous replication

Backup Vault

  • Dedicated vault with automated lifecycle management
  • AWS default vault for Aurora snapshots
  • Access controlled via IAM roles with the least privilege principle

Data Encryption

Encryption at Rest
  • Algorithm: AES-256 via AWS Key Management Service (KMS)
  • Encryption enabled by default on all Aurora databases
  • Snapshots automatically encrypted with the same key as the source database
Encryption in Transit
  • TLS 1.2+ for all application connections
  • Database connections forced over SSL/TLS
  • Backup transfer managed internally by AWS over an encrypted private network

Monitoring

The infrastructure is equipped with the following service monitoring procedures and mechanisms:

  • Server log: All accesses and errors are logged on individual server machines (frontend and database) and the load balancer (aggregated across all machines connected to the service).
  • Email pre-alerts when peak thresholds are exceeded (CPU usage, number of DB connections).
  • Uptime Robot: Domain monitoring. If the site is unresponsive, the team is notified via email and internal communication channels (Slack).
  • Automatic application error notification: Any errors generated by application functionality on the server are notified to the support team.
  • Monitoring and multi-channel alert system: The difference between available and utilized resources (CPU and RAM) is continuously monitored. When preset thresholds are exceeded, the system triggers autoscaling and communicates the event via various channels to technical staff.

Disaster Recovery

Data RPO (Recovery Point Objective): 5 minutes
  • Database: Aurora maintains continuous incremental backups every 5 minutes for point-in-time recovery
  • File System: 24 hours (automatic daily backups)
Maximum database data loss is limited to the last 5 minutes of operation
Filesystem RPO (Recovery Point Objective): 24 hours
    File System: 24 hours (automatic daily backups) Maximum filesystem data loss is limited to the last 24 hours of operation
    Data RTO (Recovery Time Objective): 72 hours
    • Contractually guaranteed time for complete recovery in a full disaster recovery scenario
    • Includes: database restore, instance startup, application integrity check

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