CircleCI Security
At CircleCI, our top concern is protecting our users’ intellectual property
and sensitive secrets such as keys, tokens, and credentials.
Compliance and Authorizations
CircleCI takes the security of your applications seriously. We partner with the top security organizations to ensure that your projects are built, deployed, and maintained securely.
FedRAMP Tailored
SOC 2 Type I Compliant
SOC 2 compliance is a component of the American Institute of CPAs (AICPA)’s Service Organization Control reporting platform.
Privacy Shield
Privacy Shield compliant for US- and E.U.-based data transfers in compliance with the European Union General Data Privacy Regulation.
Product security features
Get the compliance, security, and audit logging features that you need. Choose our cloud-hosted service that we manage (SaaS), or run your own instance of CircleCI on your infrastructure (self-hosted).
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Source code securityCommunication with your VCS to access source code is always encrypted over the wire using SSH and/or HTTPS.
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Environment variables (secrets)Protect secrets and other sensitive data in CircleCI using environment variables.
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Restricted contextsRestricted contexts allow encrypted storage and sharing of environment variables across multiple projects while limiting access to certain user groups.
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Audit loggingUse audit logs to monitor anomalies, assist in forensics, and demonstrate compliance.
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Runtime isolationCircleCI runs all builds in isolated sandboxes that are destroyed after each use.
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Console output and artifactsEncryption is employed over the wire using SSH and/or HTTPS for both console output and artifacts. Both are only available to those with read access to your repository.
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Two-factor authenticationCircleCI inherits 2FA authentication established in your third-party VCS provider.
Compliance & Certifications
Current compliance & certifications
Soc 2 Type I Compliant
SOC 2 provides CircleCI with an opportunity to meet (and exceed) industry standards and gives our customer organization’s access to industry-recognized, standardized reports that they can compare across services in our space. Achieving SOC 2 compliance means that CircleCI has put in place and follows the procedures and security policies necessary to reduce risks, and that their processes can be requested and audited. Learn more about SOC 2 type I at https://www.aicpa.org/.
FedRAMP Tailored
Our FedRAMP Tailored designation demonstrates that CircleCI meets US government data security standards and is authorized for use within US government agencies. Learn more about the FedRAMP certification at https://www.fedramp.gov/.
E.U. and Swiss Privacy Shield
The certification ensures that CircleCI meets all data transfer security standards for the United States, the EU, and Switzerland under the EU-U.S. and Swiss-U.S. Privacy Shield Frameworks. Learn more about Privacy Shield at https://www.privacyshield.gov/welcome.
Cloud Security Alliance
CircleCI has documented security controls which meet the rigorous standards for cloud data security set by the Cloud Security Alliance. Download a copy of CircleCI’s Star Registry answers at https://cloudsecurityalliance.org/.
PCI Compliance
CircleCI leverages the PCI compliance of Chargify, Stripe and Zuora.
Business Practices
Personnel & Processors
Background checks
All CircleCI employees and contractors must pass a background check and sign confidentiality agreements.
Employee security awareness
CircleCI mandates that new employees attend classes covering security best practices.
Engineer security education
Engineers are required to attend an additional technical security workshop.
Policies
CircleCI maintains various security policies which are maintained and communicated by our security management team.
Partner management
CircleCI requires all partners and third-party vendors to fill out a security questionnaire. Those which handle PII are also required to sign a Data Processing Addendum.
Security Hall of Fame
CircleCI maintains a security hall of fame which lists persons who have helped CircleCI to identify a security vulnerability. Report a security concern
Security incident response
Response team
CircleCI maintains a dedicated Incident Response Team.
Response policy + plan
CircleCI maintains an Incident Response Policy and Runbook to facilitate decision making during critical situations.
Communication
Network and security incidents are published at https://status.circleci.com/
Physical Security
Offices Security
Headquarters security
CircleCI headquarters employs 24-hour door personnel and badge access is required at all hours. Visitors are required to sign in and be escorted at all times.
Remote offices security
CircleCI’s remote offices in Denver, Toronto, Boston, Japan, and London implement similar physical security controls to the San Francisco headquarters.
Fleet Security
Linux fleet security
CircleCI uses Amazon Web Services for its Linux fleet and Google Cloud Platform for supplementary computing. Both vendors are industry leaders in security and privacy.
macOS fleet security
CircleCI owns and operates a macOS fleet housed at the Milwaukee Colo datacenter in Milwaukee. No CircleCI employee has physical access to the machines and all administration is done remotely. Datacenter engineers are the only people with access to provisioning machines, updating or deprovisioning machines. Federal regulators completed a full-day onsite audit in 2019 to assess the security, availability and integrity of the facility. Extensive badging, access logging, and other security controls are in place, all of which have been audited and approved under SOC 2 type I compliance.
Network & Data Security
Network Security
Vulnerability scanning
CircleCI implements a Docker-centric vulnerability scanning tool in its software development CI/CD process. Patching timelines CircleCI’s cloud service are:
Critical - 14 to 30 days | High - 14 to 30 days | Medium - 45 to 90 days | Low - 90 to 180 days. Monthly scans are submitted to federal authorities as part of ongoing FedRAMP compliance.
Critical - 14 to 30 days | High - 14 to 30 days | Medium - 45 to 90 days | Low - 90 to 180 days. Monthly scans are submitted to federal authorities as part of ongoing FedRAMP compliance.
Internal systems auditing
CircleCI maintains a formal Audit Policy governing application events, system events, hardware events, and physical access. This includes the what, when, and where of the event, its source, its object, its outcome, and the person associated with it.
Architecture
CircleCI’s architecture consists of multiple layers of data security including a DMZ, bastion hosts, and iptables.
Global distribution
CircleCI’s Site Reliability, Support and Engineering teams are globally distributed for 24/7/365 coverage.
Build isolation
CircleCI runs all builds in isolated sandboxes that are destroyed after each use.
Data Security
Traffic encryption
All data in transit is encrypted via TLS and SSH.
Environment variable encryption
Environment variables are encrypted at rest and in transit, and injected into the runtime environment at the start of a job. All sensitive secrets such as keys, tokens, and other credentials should be stored as environment variables within CircleCI.
Source code encryption
Source code is always encrypted via TLS and SSH in transit, but is not encrypted at rest. Source code at rest is secured behind multiple layers of architecture security such as DMZ, bastion hosts, and iptables.
Data Backup
CircleCI maintains a Data Backup and Snapshot Policy that requires restoration capabilities within common industry timelines.
Application Security
Secure Development
Secure coding
The Software Development Lifecycle Policy dictates delivery, review and merge processes to minimize rollbacks, downtime, design flaws and security incidents.
Site reliability
CircleCI employs a team of Site Reliability Engineers ensuring that the CircleCI application security layers are consistently maintained.
Application-level security
OWASP Top 10
CircleCI's web application is designed to withstand OWASP Top 10 matters such as injections, broken authentication and session management, cross-site scripting (XSS), insecure direct object references, missing function level access control, cross-site request forgery (CSRF), unvalidated redirects and forwards.
Application penetration testing
Third-party penetration testers are hired quarterly to test the CircleCI application, network, infrastructure, and new products for vulnerabilities. Coverage ranges from OWASP Top 10 to threat modeling of new product features.
Have a security concern about CircleCI?
We're confident in our implementation around matters such as cryptomining, email spoofing, and DKIM records. However, here are some issues we would be excited to hear about:
- Injection vulnerabilities
- Authentication or session problems
- Improper access to sensitive data
- Broken access controls
- Cross-site scripting
- Anything from the OWASP Top 10 Project
Upon discovering a vulnerability, we ask that you act in a way to protect our users' data:
- Inform us as soon as possible.
- Test against fake data and accounts, not our users' private data (please ask if you'd like a free account to work on this).
- Work with us to close the vulnerability before disclosing it to others.
Report your security concerns to CircleCI.
If you have found a vulnerability in CircleCI, please contact our security team by email at security@circleci.com.
If you are reporting a sensitive issue, please encrypt your message using our security team's GPG key (ID: 0x4013DDA7, fingerprint: 3CD2 A48F 2071 61C0 B9B7 1AE2 6170 15B8 4013 DDA7)
Email security@circleci.com
