Keeping our customers' data secure is the most important thing that Intercom does. We go to considerable lengths to ensure that all data sent to Intercom is handled securely - keeping Intercom secure is fundamental to the nature of our business.
We want to share some of the details of what we do to keep things secure, and some of the work that we're doing to continually improve the security of your data. This document is a living document, and we will add to it from time to time.
You are probably also interested in checking out our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy too. If you have any questions, as ever please contact us at security@intercom.io.
Our team has relevant experience
Our team includes people who've played lead roles in designing, building and operating highly secure Internet facing systems, such as payment processing platforms, cloud services and content distribution networks in companies such as Amazon and Facebook. We also have people who've successfully built a number of startups from scratch, and others who have worked in well established smaller Internet businesses.
We host in world class facilities
The vast majority of our services and data are hosted in Amazon Web Services facilities in the USA. Further details about the considerable measures Amazon take in securing their facilities and services can be found here: https://aws.amazon.com/compliance/
We follow best practices
At Intercom we follow a number of best practices that improve our security posture. Here are a few examples:
We have functioning, frequently used automation in place so that we can safely and reliably rollout changes to both our application and operating platform within minutes. We typically deploy dozens of times a day, so we have high confidence that we can get a security fix out quickly when required.
All data sent to Intercom is encrypted in transit. Our API and application endpoints are TLS/SSL only and score an "A+" rating on SSL Labs' tests - meaning that we only use strong cipher suites and have features such as HSTS and Perfect Forward Secrecy fully enabled. We also encrypt data at rest.
We regularly engage with well-regarded third-party auditors to audit our code-base and infrastructure, and work with them to resolve potential issues.
Our infrastructure is managed as code with Terraform. We use technologies such as Graylog, AWS Cloudtrail and PantherLabs to provide an audit trail over our infrastructure and the Intercom application. Auditing allows us to do ad-hoc security analysis, track changes made to our setup and audit access to every layer of our stack.
We use two-factor authentication whenever possible. We ask vendors to enforce two factor authentication in all our accounts. We discourage use of shared accounts on any system - when we have no choice we use 1Password to securely share logins. We review which accounts can access our systems and the permissions they have regularly.
We don't trust our corporate network - it has no backdoors into our production systems.
We have a documented incident response plan and educate all staff on security procedures and policies.
External penetration testing twice a year performed by dedicated external security partners.
Running continuous webscans on our main web properties using Detectify.
Any changes to the Intercom code base have been peer reviewed and are automatically tested as part of our CI/CD process to identify any regression or security flaws using static analysis.
Running a public bug bounty program with Bugcrowd.
Our product has many security features for you
Security has a shared responsibility. You should enable the following product security features to enhance the security of your workspace:
Enable Identity Verification for your integration to prevent cross-user impersonation via the Messenger.
Disable attribute creation via the Messenger to prevent bad actors from inserting their own data through the browser.
Use the Intercom Javascript shutdown method to end a session for a user when they log out of your app.
Add a trusted domains list to ensure the Messenger is only loaded on domains you own and care about.
Use Teammate Activity Logs to audit who makes critical changes e.g: data deletion or export.
Use two-factor authentication for your teammates to securely login to Intercom.
Set permissions and roles for your teammates in your workspace to limit access to data, features or destructive actions.
Tooltips & visual indicators for untrusted links in email conversations.
We do not store payment details
Intercom is not in the business of storing or processing payments. All payments made to Intercom goes through our partner, Stripe. Details about their security setup and PCI compliance can be found at Stripe's security page.
Have more security questions?
Check out this article which will answer many of your security questions.
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