WASABI Overview - Security

WASABI is a store and forward application for flight data. This document contains some of the details about the storage and forwarding, in regards to security.

For storage, WASABI pulls the data from the source (typically either a manual collection from source media, or an automated collection from a server) and compresses it using the gzip algorithm. This data is then encrypted using an AES 256-bit cipher.  These compressed and encrypted files are stored on a disk local to WASABI (typically the profile directory of a user when running in non-service mode, or under the shared data area when running in service mode) until they can be sent to the EMS platform.

For forwarding, files are typically sent in the order they were collected. Our servers are contacted using HTTPS* (also known as TLS or SSL), which is an industry standard, public key based cryptography infrastructure.  Our servers are further protected by a Web Application Firewall [WAF], which scans for threats and stops them before they reach our servers.

Once the data makes its way to the EMS platform it remains encrypted until processing begins, at which point it is once again stored encrypted on disk.

* Our HTTPS services have received an "A" rating through the Qualys SSL Labs tester application. TLS 1.2 (or higher) is required. The actual version of TLS that will be used is dependent on the client operating system version. We recommend Windows 7 or higher.