G-Cloud 11 services are suspended on Digital Marketplace

If you have an ongoing procurement on G-Cloud 11, you must complete it by 18 December 2020. Existing contracts with Knowa are still valid.
Knowa

Knowa

Knowa is a unique governance and collaboration hub for senior executives. It cuts out noise, saves knowledge and reduces wasted time and costs, empowering everyone to deliver modern governance with less effort.

Features

  • Real time and secure Discussions and 1-1-Many Chats
  • Secure and customisable Document storage
  • Define custom Groups, Work streams or Sub committees
  • Granular permissions and Guest access
  • Add Mentions, Voting and Actions within Discussions
  • Access anywhere, on any device
  • Connect with external Organisations for Collaboration and Negotiations
  • Track activity across Groups

Benefits

  • Access all your information in one structured place
  • Reduce email noise and cluttered inboxes
  • Improve security and reduce risk of phishing and human error
  • Capture knowledge and improve business continuity
  • Improve collaboration and negotiation outcomes by working on neutral ground
  • Add and remove individuals instantly minimising time to onboard stakeholders
  • Ensure your team and guests can access the right information

Pricing

£0 to £3,000 an instance a year

  • Education pricing available
  • Free trial available

Service documents

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 hello@knowa.co. Tell them what format you need. It will help if you say what assistive technology you use.

Framework

G-Cloud 11

Service ID

3 3 4 1 7 3 3 7 9 2 1 2 3 2 2

Contact

Knowa Knowa Support
Telephone: 02074341990
Email: hello@knowa.co

Service scope

Software add-on or extension
No
Cloud deployment model
Public cloud
Service constraints
No
System requirements
  • Mac OS X 10.9 or later
  • Windows 7 or later
  • IOS 10.0 or later
  • Android 4.4 or later

User support

Email or online ticketing support
Email or online ticketing
Support response times
General support responses can be expected within 2 hours from 9am - 6pm Monday to Friday.

Out of office hours and at weekends the response time is 12 hours.
User can manage status and priority of support tickets
No
Phone support
Yes
Phone support availability
9 to 5 (UK time), Monday to Friday
Web chat support
Web chat
Web chat support availability
9 to 5 (UK time), 7 days a week
Web chat support accessibility standard
WCAG 2.1 AA or EN 301 549
Web chat accessibility testing
We rely on the testing conducted by the supplier of the web chat support platform.
Onsite support
Onsite support
Support levels
One to one and group training is encouraged during the initial onboarding phase after which Knowa gives all users free support 7 days a weeks to ensure they can get help whenever they need it.
Support available to third parties
Yes

Onboarding and offboarding

Getting started
Knowa provides one to one and group training throughout the onboarding period. The length varies for each client.

Online tutorials, videos and in product walk throughs are provided to all users and are easily accessible from within Knowa itself.
Service documentation
Yes
Documentation formats
HTML
End-of-contract data extraction
Knowa provides an exported archive of all data, on demand for owners and administrators of organisations. Depending on the size of the export we can deliver this online or via an encrypted physical drive.

More information can be read here - https://knowa.co/your-data/
End-of-contract process
There are no additional costs for retrieving an archive of all data at the end of the contract.

Using the service

Web browser interface
Yes
Supported browsers
  • Microsoft Edge
  • Firefox
  • Chrome
  • Safari 9+
  • Opera
Application to install
No
Designed for use on mobile devices
Yes
Differences between the mobile and desktop service
There are subtle interface differences to make the most of screen sizes but the overall user experience and functionality is consistent across mobile and desktop.
Service interface
No
API
No
Customisation available
No

Scaling

Independence of resources
Knowa operates continuous monitoring of its services and implements throttling or rate limiting on demand at a threshold that will affect other users.

Knowa's also utilised services provided by AWS that distribute operations across the production servers.

Analytics

Service usage metrics
No

Resellers

Supplier type
Not a reseller

Staff security

Staff security clearance
Other security clearance
Government security clearance
Up to Baseline Personnel Security Standard (BPSS)

Asset protection

Knowledge of data storage and processing locations
Yes
Data storage and processing locations
  • United Kingdom
  • European Economic Area (EEA)
  • EU-US Privacy Shield agreement locations
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 Tigerscheme qualified provider or a CREST-approved service provider
Protecting data at rest
  • Physical access control, complying with another standard
  • Encryption of all physical media
Data sanitisation process
Yes
Data sanitisation type
  • Explicit overwriting of storage before reallocation
  • Deleted data can’t be directly accessed
Equipment disposal approach
In-house destruction process

Data importing and exporting

Data export approach
Users can ask for an export of their data on demand.
Data export formats
CSV
Data import formats
CSV

Data-in-transit protection

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

Availability and resilience

Guaranteed availability
Services will be available 99.9%, measured monthly, excluding holidays and weekends and scheduled maintenance.

Customer’s sole and exclusive remedy, and Company’s entire liability, in connection with Service availability will be that for each period of downtime lasting longer than one hour, Company will credit Customer 5% of Service fees for each period of 30 or more consecutive minutes of downtime; provided that no more than one such credit will accrue per day. Downtime will begin to accrue as soon as Customer (with notice to Company) recognises that downtime is taking place, and continues until the availability of Services is restored.
Approach to resilience
Our hosting environment is fully-redundant with disaster recovery procedures. More information is available on request.
Outage reporting
Public dashboard: http://status.knowa.co/

Identity and authentication

User authentication needed
Yes
User authentication
  • 2-factor authentication
  • Username or password
Access restrictions in management interfaces and support channels
Workers are only authorised to access data that they reasonably must handle in order to fulfil their current job responsibilities.

Knowa uses multi-factor authentication for access to all administrative systems. Access to administrative servers requires access from specific IP addresses. Passwords shared using password managers are hidden.
Access restriction testing frequency
At least every 6 months
Management access authentication
  • 2-factor authentication
  • Public key authentication (including by TLS client certificate)
  • 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
No
ISO 28000:2007 certification
No
CSA STAR certification
No
PCI certification
No
Other security certifications
No

Security governance

Named board-level person responsible for service security
Yes
Security governance certified
No
Security governance approach
Security and processes within the organisation are monitored daily. Every employee performs their actions with security as a first step. Corners are never cut.
Information security policies and processes
Knowa has clear roles and responsibilities to determine who across the organisation is responsible for overseeing every part of our security policies and procedures. The responsibilities of each role are available on demand.

Knowa maintains this set of security policies, procedures and guidelines to provide every employee and contractor with the tools and knowledge they need to operate flawlessly in their security levels.

Knowa is also an active advocate of security in the sectors in which it operates in order to improve the overall attitude and understanding of information security and to maintain their own high benchmarks.

Operational security

Configuration and change management standard
Supplier-defined controls
Configuration and change management approach
Knowa uses robust procedures for change management . All changes, including those affecting permissions and access rights, and Client Data are documented, tested and approved by multiple people before deployment.

The ability to rollback to previous states is instant.
Vulnerability management type
Supplier-defined controls
Vulnerability management approach
Knowa’s Security Team continuously monitors threats and risks using a web application firewall (WAF).

All vulnerabilities are triaged and prioritised with high risk issues patched instantly.
Protective monitoring type
Supplier-defined controls
Protective monitoring approach
Knowa monitors all access types and requests, including failed password attempts, failed multi-factor authentication attempts and multiple reset password attempts.

Knowa operates an intelligent automated threshold that blocks one or a combination of browser session, IP address and user based on the perceived threat levels.
Incident management type
Supplier-defined controls
Incident management approach
Knowa has defined procedures for assessing and managing threats and events, from the automated threat detection, manual oversight and user reports.

Users are able to report incidents via email, phone or in-app support.

In the event of a data breach, Knowa will comply with Data Protection Laws in the notifying of users.

Secure development

Approach to secure software development best practice
Conforms to a recognised standard, but self-assessed

Public sector networks

Connection to public sector networks
No

Pricing

Price
£0 to £3,000 an instance a year
Discount for educational organisations
Yes
Free trial available
Yes
Description of free trial
1 month free pilot, unlimited usage

Service documents

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 hello@knowa.co. Tell them what format you need. It will help if you say what assistive technology you use.