Epimorphics Ltd

Epimorphics Data Integration & Publishing Platform

Our data integration and publishing platform enables organisations to transform and integrate data from a wide variety of systems and then make that integrated data available for consumption through easy-to-use APIs. Customised data transformations can be used to ingest data from a wide variety of sources including near-real-time data streams.

Features

  • flexible, high performance data storage
  • fully standards-compliant linked data publication platform
  • widely used within the UK public-sector
  • replicated for fault-tolerance and scalability
  • examples include publishing near-real time data
  • ingest data from a wide variety of sources
  • data quality, validation and data quality integrated with data flows
  • data integration - high-performance with large data volumes
  • hosted and managed enterprise Data Platform Service
  • enable advanced front-end app interfaces beyond the standard UI

Benefits

  • robust, reliable publication of sustainable, trusted and usable 5-star data
  • adaptive/flexible platform can be grown to meet changing needs
  • deployment flexibility on the cloud or within your own infrastructure
  • provide customers with integrated, live updates twenty-four hours a day
  • build data integration into your transforming organisation
  • bring data from your legacy systems into one place
  • publish high-quality data that is actually used
  • enable teams to start integrating, managing, curating and using data
  • data sharing via flexible APIs and bulk download
  • create and deliver services with user needs at their heart

Pricing

£900 to £2,600 a unit a month

Service documents

Framework

G-Cloud 12

Service ID

3 8 0 0 3 0 4 6 3 1 6 8 1 9 9

Contact

Epimorphics Ltd Martin Merry
Telephone: 0127 5399069
Email: gcloud@epimorphics.com

Service scope

Software add-on or extension
No
Cloud deployment model
Public cloud
Service constraints
No specific constraints
System requirements
  • Modern web browser
  • Web access from customer site (http and https)

User support

Email or online ticketing support
Email or online ticketing
Support response times
Dependent upon specific implementation. Generally within 4 hours during support hours (08:30-17:00, Monday to Friday, excluding UK public holidays). See Service Definition documents for full details.
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
No
Support levels
Support levels are agreed with the client during the setup phase. We also provide an incident reporting service.

The basic service is available during normal business hours (09.00 – 17.30 Mondays – Fridays, excluding public holidays). We provide an email address for incident reporting and will respond to any notification within 4 hours. If an incident results in loss of service we will restore the service within 1 business day; in all other cases we will use reasonable efforts to resolve the incident as quickly as possible.
Support available to third parties
Yes

Onboarding and offboarding

Getting started
We offer support in getting started with our dedicated Data Integration and Publishing service under Cloud Support. We also provide training via our Linked Data Training Service.
Service documentation
Yes
Documentation formats
  • HTML
  • PDF
End-of-contract data extraction
No user data is collected by the system – the only data stored on the publishing platform is data supplied by the client. On termination of the contract all client data will be securely deleted. During the life of the contract clients can request access to a copy of all the data stored on the system. We have also supported public sector clients in transitioning the technology to their own infrastructure.
End-of-contract process
On termination of the contract all client data will be securely deleted. We can support clients in transitioning the technology to their own infrastructure or alternatives at additional cost.

Using the service

Web browser interface
Yes
Supported browsers
  • Internet Explorer 11
  • 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
We use responsive design wherever possible
Service interface
No
API
Yes
What users can and can't do using the API
For all service levels an API is provided for access to the data. Full customization of this API is possible through our associated support services. For the fully flexible service level, an API is provided to enable automated update, conversion and publishing of data updates. On-boarding of new data sources and new data formats, is not available through the API but requires configuration through our Data Integration and Publishing service. Test environments can be provided under our fully flexible service level and configured using our Data Integration and Publishing service.
API documentation
Yes
API documentation formats
  • Open API (also known as Swagger)
  • HTML
API sandbox or test environment
Yes
Customisation available
Yes
Description of customisation
Using our associated support services, buyers can carry out extensive customisations of this service - see service description document

Scaling

Independence of resources
Each customer's instance of the service runs on dedicated and replicated cloud-first hardware on Amazon Web Services (AWS).

Analytics

Service usage metrics
Yes
Metrics types
Request counts (real time dashboard available) and full web server logs allowing clients to breakdown requests by URL, client and requester IP. We can install analytic tags on pages to allow clients to perform their own detailed usage and user journey analysis. Regular reports can be provided as part of our fully flexible service level.
Reporting types
  • Regular reports
  • Reports on request

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)
User control over data storage and processing locations
Yes
Datacentre security standards
Managed by a third party
Penetration testing frequency
Less than once a year
Penetration testing approach
Another external penetration testing organisation
Protecting data at rest
Physical access control, complying with SSAE-16 / ISAE 3402
Data sanitisation process
No
Equipment disposal approach
In-house destruction process

Data importing and exporting

Data export approach
The service is designed to export data - as a data publishing platform
Data export formats
  • CSV
  • Other
Other data export formats
  • RDF
  • RESTful API
  • JSON-LD
  • CSV
  • TTL
  • XML
  • Others
Data import formats
  • CSV
  • Other
Other data import formats
  • RDF
  • TTL
  • JSON-LD
  • Geo-JSON
  • XML
  • Others via data connectors

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)
  • Other
Other protection within supplier network
Network operates as a Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) within Amazon Web Services infrastructure providing full subnet isolation. Administrator access is through passwordless ssh and TLS (>1.2).

Availability and resilience

Guaranteed availability
We typically host services on AWS who provide no availability guarantees, so we do not offer an SLA on availability. In practice, however, we achieve more than 99% availability. For the fully flexible service specific SLA options can be discussed.
Approach to resilience
Apart from our entry level service all services are offered on replicated servers operating in different availability zones.
Outage reporting
Outages are detected using configurable service monitoring probes via a mix of industry-standard Nagios monitoring software and external cloud-based uptime services. Outages are reported through a notification service that allows for both real time (slack) and email delivery of notifications. Just as important we collect a rich range of metrics at the infrastructure and workload level that support dashboards and alerts, allowing us to detect many service health issues (such as overload or reducing disk space) before they lead to outages. Real time notification of application software errors via Sentry round out the approach.

Identity and authentication

User authentication needed
No
Access restrictions in management interfaces and support channels
We provide user authentication and user-level access control
Access restriction testing frequency
Less than once a year
Management access authentication
Other
Description of management access authentication
Management access for the underlying tooling is configurable to use username / password, OAuth2 based Identity federation service or other methods. This would be configured upon setup.

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
Between 1 month and 6 months
Access to supplier activity audit information
Users contact the support team to get audit information
How long supplier audit data is stored for
Between 1 month and 6 months
How long system logs are stored for
Between 1 month and 6 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
We take security of our service seriously. All management of the service take place over encrypted channels (TLS/SSH). The service runs in a Virtual-Private -Cloud with full subnet isolation which limits the attack surface. Instances of the service have been subjected to several formal penetration tests by external third-parties and been approved. Any (minor) weaknesses discovered by testing have been mitigated. We use shared infrastructure management cookbooks to embody best-practice for server configuration. We perform regular service updates to apply security patches for underlying software. We subscribe to security-alert channels for that software and apply emergency security patches if necessary.
Information security policies and processes
Information security is the responsibility of all employees, who are expected to be aware of security best practice and to apply it in ways commensurate with the nature of our service and of the data we hold. We have a flat management structure and it is the responsibility of the company directors to ensure appropriate security best practice is applied.

We plan to move towards ISO27001 accreditation, and anticipate further formalization of our security policy and processes as this proceeds.

Operational security

Configuration and change management standard
Supplier-defined controls
Configuration and change management approach
The service is managed using infrastructure-as-code. We are transitioning from Chef-based configuration management to deploying on Kubernetes clusters using a "gitops" workflow. The entire infrastructure and service configuration is defined in declarative deployment files under git version control, which automatically control the configuration of the running cluster. A Change Request ticket can be linked to a Pull Request which implements the change. This allows for peer review of proposed configuration changes before release and full trace back of all configuration changes and why they were made.
Vulnerability management type
Supplier-defined controls
Vulnerability management approach
Instances of the service have been subjected to several formal penetration tests by external third parties and been approved. When appropriate lessons learned from these tests are embodied in operational cookbooks to ensure they are applied to future systems.

We maintain a regular maintenance schedule for update of service components and have automation to simplify the update process. All services are updated at least monthly and typically more frequently. We subscribe to security alert channels for relevant software and adjust our update schedule if priority patches are needed, including performing out-of-hours emergency patching when necessary.
Protective monitoring type
Supplier-defined controls
Protective monitoring approach
Our protective monitoring processes are tailored to the nature of our service. As an open data service provider our most significant vulnerability is denial of service, including accidental denial of service from bad clients. We detect this through automated service availability monitoring, real time performance metric dashboards and server logs. Responses include blocking requestors, rate throttling, and modifying service API implementation to remove DOS vulnerabilities. Responses times are detailed under service levels.

System compromise leading to data change would be detectable through server logs recording authorization requests and update transactions. Data is redundantly stored at multiple levels enabling quick recovery.
Incident management type
Supplier-defined controls
Incident management approach
We provide extensive monitoring for our services; most incidents are detected by our own monitoring, though we provide an email mechanism for users to report incidents. Following an incident we provide an email summary to any affected customers.

Secure development

Approach to secure software development best practice
Supplier-defined process

Public sector networks

Connection to public sector networks
No

Pricing

Price
£900 to £2,600 a unit a month
Discount for educational organisations
No
Free trial available
No

Service documents