Q-Solution Ltd

Certificate Authority as a Service

A Private Certificate Authority service, hosted within public cloud, providing X.509 client certificates for users, devices and systems. Designed for use by an organisation or closed community for applications such as API messaging, server mutual TLS, VPNs, IoT devices, mobile device or laptop authentication, user access to secure systems.

Features

• Private Certificate Authority service
• Dedicated Root CA / Issuing CA per customer environment
• FIPS 140-2 level 3 hardware protection of CA private keys
• Certificate revocation with optional public CRL distribution points
• Database of issued certificates
• Comprehensive logging and monitoring
• Fully automated certificate issuing option
• GitOps certificate issuing option with approval step
• 99.95% availability

Benefits

• Provides effective and secure authentication of users, devices and systems
• Helps to enable secure communications via Internet
• Can integrate with an organisation's existing systems and services
• Highly reliable and scalable
• Low operational overhead

£0.02 to £1.00 a unit

Service documents

• Pricing document

  PDF

• Skills Framework for the Information Age rate card

  PDF

• Service definition document

  PDF

• Terms and conditions

  PDF

Request an accessible format

If you use assistive technology (such as a screen reader) and need versions of these documents in a more accessible format, email the supplier at kevin.hoskins@q-solution.co.uk. Tell them what format you need. It will help if you say what assistive technology you use.

Framework

G-Cloud 14

Service ID

910473032311473

Contact

Kevin Hoskins
07966 306058
kevin.hoskins@q-solution.co.uk

Service scope

• Software add-on or extension: No
• Cloud deployment model: Public cloud
• Service constraints: Administrators require an identity within their own organisation’s Microsoft Entra ID (formerly Azure AD), which can be used for federated identity - this will normally be the case if their organisation is a Microsoft 365 customer
• System requirements: Applications using certificates must follow X.509 standard

User support

• Email or online ticketing support: Email or online ticketing
• Support response times: 4 hours, Monday to Friday, 8am to 6pm excluding UK Public Holidays
• User can manage status and priority of support tickets: Yes
• Online ticketing support accessibility: None or don’t know
• Phone support: No
• Web chat support: No
• Onsite support: Yes, at extra cost
• Support levels: Support hours for the service desk is between 8am and 6pm, Monday to Friday excluding UK Public Holidays. Protective Monitoring and System Monitoring however operates 24/7/365 and will generate alerts throughout this period in the event of any priority incidents occurring. Agreement on how these incidents outside of core hours are resolved will be agreed during the on-boarding process
• Support available to third parties: Yes

Onboarding and offboarding

• Getting started: We have a detailed onboarding process that supports users and that can be provided upon request. The process details how users are provisioned onto the service and details the levels of support Q-Solution provides.
• Service documentation: Yes
• Documentation formats: PDF
• End-of-contract data extraction: The principal data held by the system is the contents of the X.509 certificates. A data extraction facility is not considered necessary and is not provided.
• End-of-contract process: Customers wishing to change supplier should move to a new Certificate Authority infrastructure, issue new certificates, and reconfigure their systems to trust the new Certificate Authority.

Using the service

• Web browser interface: Yes
• Supported browsers:
  • Internet Explorer 11
  • Microsoft Edge
  • Firefox
  • Chrome
  • Safari
• Application to install: No
• Designed for use on mobile devices: No
• Service interface: No
• User support accessibility: None or don’t know
• API: Yes
• What users can and can't do using the API: The API can be used to:; - issue client certificates; - issue server certificates; - revoke certificates
• API documentation: Yes
• API documentation formats: Other
• API sandbox or test environment: Yes
• Customisation available: Yes
• Description of customisation: Service can be integrated with an organisation's existing systems for automated certificate issuing workflow. This can either be implemented by the customer organisation, or by Q-Solution on a professional services basis.

Scaling

• Independence of resources: Each customer has a dedicated Certificate Authority service in a separate cloud account.

Analytics

• Service usage metrics: Yes
• Metrics types: Ability to query certificate database for information such as total numbers of certificates issued, date issued, expiry date, revocations.
• Reporting types: API access

Resellers

• Supplier type: Not a reseller

Staff security

• Staff security clearance: Conforms to BS7858:2019
• Government security clearance: Up to Security Clearance (SC)

Asset protection

• Knowledge of data storage and processing locations: Yes
• Data storage and processing locations: United Kingdom
• User control over data storage and processing locations: No
• Datacentre security standards: Complies with a recognised standard (for example CSA CCM version 3.0)
• Penetration testing frequency: At least once a year
• Penetration testing approach: ‘IT Health Check’ performed by a CHECK service provider
• Protecting data at rest:
  • Physical access control, complying with another standard
  • Encryption of all physical media
  • Other
• Other data at rest protection approach: We have a detailed Access Control Policy as well as Malware and Encryption policy, subjected to annual security review that details our approach to securing customers data at rest. These can be provided to the customer upon request
• Data sanitisation process: No
• Equipment disposal approach: Complying with a recognised standard, for example CSA CCM v.30, CAS (Sanitisation) or ISO/IEC 27001

Data importing and exporting

• Data export approach: Certificates issued by the service can be downloaded via an API
• Data export formats: Other
• Other data export formats: X.509 Certificate
• Data import formats: Other
• Other data import formats: X.509 Certificate Signing Request

Data-in-transit protection

• Data protection between buyer and supplier networks: TLS (version 1.2 or above)
• Data protection within supplier network: TLS (version 1.2 or above)

Availability and resilience

• Guaranteed availability: Service level for availability is 99.95%
• Approach to resilience: The system is entirely built on serverless cloud services, operating seamlessly across multiple physical locations, with resilience managed by our cloud provider.
• Outage reporting: Email alerts and a customer facing dashboard

Identity and authentication

• User authentication needed: Yes
• User authentication:
  • 2-factor authentication
  • Identity federation with existing provider (for example Google Apps)
  • Username or password
• Access restrictions in management interfaces and support channels: Only support staff with SC clearance have access. Access is restricted to individuals accredited machines. Support staff required password and MFA. Account activity is protectively monitored and alerted. Staff have a single master account for logging in and 'Assume Role' into other accounts enable fine grain authentication and access on a 'needs to know' basis.
• Access restriction testing frequency: At least every 6 months
• Management access authentication:
  • 2-factor authentication
  • Identity federation with existing provider (for example Google Apps)
  • Username or password

Audit information for users

• Access to user activity audit information: Users contact the support team to get audit information
• How long user audit data is stored for: At least 12 months
• Access to supplier activity audit information: Users contact the support team to get audit information
• How long supplier audit data is stored for: At least 12 months
• How long system logs are stored for: At least 12 months

Standards and certifications

• ISO/IEC 27001 certification: Yes
• Who accredited the ISO/IEC 27001: BSI
• ISO/IEC 27001 accreditation date: 17/04/2024
• What the ISO/IEC 27001 doesn’t cover: Please refer to the formal BSI Certificate of Registration and our Statement of Applicability available on request
• ISO 28000:2007 certification: No
• CSA STAR certification: No
• PCI certification: No
• Cyber essentials: Yes
• Cyber essentials plus: Yes
• Other security certifications: Yes
• Any other security certifications:
  • Annual ITHC
  • PSN Protected Code of Connection

Security governance

• Named board-level person responsible for service security: Yes
• Security governance certified: Yes
• Security governance standards: ISO/IEC 27001
• Information security policies and processes: Our Security Working Group oversees the implementation, maintenance and improvement of our ISO27001:2013 Information Security Management System (ISMS). This ISMS encompasses numerous process, policies and procedures including Information Security Policy, Acceptable Usage Policy, Statement of Applicability (SOA), Risk Assessment, Secure Development Policy, MMAE Policy, Business Continuity Policy and Plan and Change and Configuration Management among many others. Additionally we have an independent IT Health Check (ITHC) performed by a CHECK Team annually and are certified to Cyber Essentials Plus (CES+)

Operational security

• Configuration and change management standard: Supplier-defined controls
• Configuration and change management approach: All software and infrastructure components are built through Infrastructure as Code, stored within a secure and backed up repository. As well as peer reviews through PR's the CI/CD Pipeline implements a number of security detection techniques to prevent compromised code being deployed into the environments
• Vulnerability management type: Conforms to a recognised standard, for example CSA CCM v3.0 or SSAE-16 / ISAE 3402
• Vulnerability management approach: We have a separately documented vulnerability management process that can be shared with customers upon request covering areas such as Monitoring, Threat Detection, Security Alerting, Compliance, Audit Logging, SIEM, Patch Management and anti malware
• Protective monitoring type: Conforms to a recognised standard, for example CSA CCM v3.0 or SSAE-16 / ISAE 3402
• Protective monitoring approach: We have a separately documented Protective Monitoring process that can be shared with customers upon request covering areas such as Monitoring, Threat Detection, Security Alerting, Compliance, Audit Logging and SIEM
• Incident management type: Supplier-defined controls
• Incident management approach: We have a comprehensive documented approach to both Incident and Problem Management. This information, in the form of PDF can be provided to customers on request

Secure development

• Approach to secure software development best practice: Independent review of processes (for example CESG CPA Build Standard, ISO/IEC 27034, ISO/IEC 27001 or CSA CCM v3.0)

Public sector networks

• Connection to public sector networks: No

Social Value

• Social Value:

  Social Value

  Fighting climate change

  Fighting climate change

  The infrastructure supporting this service uses a serverless architecture in public cloud with autoscaling. Compute resources such as processor, memory and storage are minimised by automatically scaling down at times of low usage. Hosting the solution in public cloud results in efficiencies as infrastructure is shared across all of the cloud providers customers in that region.; ; This approach leads to a reduction in power usage and cooling requirements compared with a traditional infrastructure using either physical machines at a data centre, or virtual machines at a cloud provider.; ; The service also benefits from the progressive environmental sustainability program of the public cloud provider hosting the service, resulting in a positive impact on climate change.

Pricing

• Price: £0.02 to £1.00 a unit
• Discount for educational organisations: No
• Free trial available: No

Service documents

• Pricing document

  PDF

• Skills Framework for the Information Age rate card

  PDF

• Service definition document

  PDF

• Terms and conditions

  PDF

Request an accessible format

If you use assistive technology (such as a screen reader) and need versions of these documents in a more accessible format, email the supplier at kevin.hoskins@q-solution.co.uk. Tell them what format you need. It will help if you say what assistive technology you use.