Secure file uploads

Pega Cloud implements virus scanning to ensure the integrity of our service, but clients are responsible for mitigating the impacts malware can have on users, applications, and data.

If documents can be uploaded into your application on Pega Cloud, we recommend you secure them as follows:

• Use a virus checker to check the files that can be uploaded.
• Regularly update your virus checker to enable detection of new viruses.
• Restrict the file type by adding a when rule or a decision table to the SetAttachmentProperties activity to evaluate whether a document type is allowed. If a file type is not allowed (evaluated as false), you can set up a message on the step page that stops the save attachment activity from being performed.
• Verify that the XML/AllowDocTypes dynamic system setting is set to false.

Follow security leading practices for development and testing

The following recommendations are proposed around data used for testing:

• Select test data carefully to ensure that it is protected and controlled through your application authorization and access controls.
• Be mindful of the data you elect to import into sandbox environments (for development and testing purposes).
• Recognize that developers and testers commonly have elevated privileges in “lower” (sandbox) environments and that your users, not Pega, grant and maintain the application privileges.
• If you elect to persist sensitive data to sandbox environments, consider log file implications and check that they do not expose sensitive data.
• Ideally, create test data in a generic form with no relation to live system data. In the exception where live data is needed to perform accurate testing, the live data should be:
  • Anonymized as far as possible.
  • Carefully selected and secured for the period of testing.
  • Securely deleted after you complete your testing.
• Alternatively, you may also consider:
  • Using a production mirror sandbox, which provides an architectural replica of a your scaled production environment (rules and data) and which can be used for production staging and testing, scale benchmark testing, and load performance testing.
  • Performing a Pega product file export/import operation to build a production-like equivalent of your current applications. This will not transfer any of your data but will transfer all rules and schema – and will effectively duplicate your service without including production data.
• Ensure that your developers are informed of and adhere to your organization’s internal security practices pertaining to protecting or masking sensitive data used within your Pega application.

If you are not deploying on Pega Cloud, see Security Checklist when deploying in on-premises environments.