Security and privacy at Modal

The document outlines Modal’s security and privacy commitments.

Application security (AppSec)

AppSec is the practice of building software that is secure by design, secured during development, secured with testing and review, and deployed securely.

• We build our software using memory-safe programming languages, including Rust (for our worker runtime and storage infrastructure) and Python (for our API servers and Modal client).
• Software dependencies are audited by Github’s Dependabot.
• We make decisions that minimize our attack surface. Most interactions with Modal are well-described in a gRPC API, and occur through modal, our open-source command-line tool and Python client library.
• We have automated synthetic monitoring test applications that continuously check for network and application isolation within our runtime.
• We use HTTPS for secure connections. Modal forces HTTPS for all services using TLS (SSL), including our public website and the Dashboard to ensure secure connections. Modal’s client library connects to Modal’s servers over TLS and verify TLS certificates on each connection.
• All user data is encrypted in transit and at rest.
• All public Modal APIs use TLS 1.3, the latest and safest version of the TLS protocol.
• Internal code reviews are performed using a modern, PR-based development workflow (Github), and engage external penetration testing firms to assess our software security.

Corporate security (CorpSec)

CorpSec is the practice of making sure Modal employees have secure access to Modal company infrastructure, and also that exposed channels to Modal are secured. CorpSec controls are the primary concern of standards such as SOC2.

• Access to our services and applications is gated on a SSO Identity Provider (IdP).
• We mandate phishing-resistant multi-factor authentication (MFA) in all enrolled IdP accounts.
• We regularly audit access to internal systems.
• Employee laptops are protected by full disk encryption using FileVault2, and managed by Secureframe MDM.

Network and infrastructure security (InfraSec)

InfraSec is the practice of ensuring a hardened, minimal attack surface for components we deploy on our network.

• Modal uses logging and metrics observability providers, including Datadog and Sentry.io.
• Compute jobs at Modal are containerized and virtualized using gVisor, the sandboxing technology developed at Google and used in their Google Cloud Run and Google Kubernetes Engine cloud services.
• We conduct annual business continuity and security incident exercises.

Vulnerability remediation

Security vulnerabilities directly affecting Modal’s systems and services will be patched or otherwise remediated within a timeframe appropriate for the severity of the vulnerability, subject to the public availability of a patch or other remediation mechanisms.

If there is a CVSS severity rating accompanying a vulnerability disclosure, we rely on that as a starting point, but may upgrade or downgrade the severity using our best judgement.

Severity timeframes

• Critical: 24 hours
• High: 1 week
• Medium: 1 month
• Low: 3 months
• Informational: 3 months or longer

Shared responsibility model

Modal prioritizes the integrity, security, and availability of customer data. Under our shared responsibility model, customers also have certain responsibilities regarding data backup, recovery, and availability.

1. Data backup: Customers are responsible for maintaining backups of their data. Performing daily backups is recommended. Customers must routinely verify the integrity of their backups.
2. Data recovery: Customers should maintain a comprehensive data recovery plan that includes detailed procedures for data restoration in the event of data loss, corruption, or system failure. Customers must routinely test their recovery process.
3. Availability: While Modal is committed to high service availability, customers must implement contingency measures to maintain business continuity during service interruptions. Customers are also responsible for the reliability of their own IT infrastructure.
4. Security measures: Customers must implement appropriate security measures, such as encryption and access controls, to protect their data throughout the backup, storage, and recovery processes. These processes must comply with all relevant laws and regulations.

SOC 2

We have successfully completed a System and Organization Controls (SOC) 2 Type 2 audit. Contact us at security@modal.com for more details or access to the report.

HIPAA

HIPAA, which stands for the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, establishes a set of standards that protect health information, including individuals’ medical records and other individually identifiable health information. HIPAA guidelines apply to both covered entities and business associates—of which Modal is the latter if you are processing PHI on Modal.

Modal’s services can be used in a HIPAA compliant manner. It is important to note that unlike other security standards, there is no officially recognized certification process for HIPAA compliance. Instead, we demonstrate our compliance with regulations such as HIPAA via the practices outlined in this doc, our technical and operational security measures, and through official audits for standards compliance such as SOC 2 certification.

To use Modal services for HIPAA-compliant workloads, a Business Associate Agreement (BAA) should be established with us prior to submission of any PHI. This is available on our Enterprise plan. Contact us at security@modal.com to get started. At the moment, Volumes, Images (persistent storage), and user code are out of scope of the commitments within our BAA, so PHI should not be used in those areas of the product.

PCI

Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI) is a standard that defines the security and privacy requirements for payment card processing.

Modal uses Stripe to securely process transactions and trusts their commitment to best-in-class security. We do not store personal credit card information for any of our customers. Stripe is certified as “PCI Service Provider Level 1”, which is the highest level of certification in the payments industry.

Bug bounty program

Keeping user data secure is a top priority at Modal. We welcome contributions from the security community to identify vulnerabilities in our product and disclose them to us in a responsible manner. We offer rewards ranging from $100 to $1000+ depending on the severity of the issue discovered. To participate, please send a report of the vulnerability to security@modal.com.

Data privacy

Modal will never access or use:

• your source code.
• the inputs (function arguments) or outputs (function return values) to your Modal Functions.
• any data you store in Modal, such as in Images or Volumes.

Inputs (function arguments) and outputs (function return values) are deleted from our system after a max TTL of 7 days.

App logs and metadata are stored on Modal. Modal will not access this data unless permission is granted by the user to help with troubleshooting.

Questions?

Email us!