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PensionsPortal.ie is built to meet the security obligations of IORP II, the GDPR, and the Pensions Authority’s expectations for technology-enabled pension administration. Security is not a single control but a layered architecture: every layer assumes the others may fail.

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Defense-in-Depth Layers

Network & CDN

Cloudflare WAF sits in front of all traffic. DDoS mitigation, bot management, and IP reputation filtering are applied before requests reach Vercel’s edge.

Transport Security

All connections are TLS 1.2+. HSTS with a two-year max-age and preload is enforced at the HTTP header layer via next.config.ts.

Authentication

Auth.js v5 (NextAuth) with bcrypt-hashed passwords and JWT sessions. Credentials are never logged or transmitted in plaintext.

Authorisation & Tenancy

Role-based access control (RBAC) with four roles. Every data query is scoped by brokerId / schemeId — cross-tenant access is structurally impossible.

Data Protection

PPS numbers are AES-256 encrypted at the application layer before storage. The encryption key is held only in Vercel environment variables.

Audit Trail

An append-only audit_logs table records every material action. No UPDATE or DELETE is permitted on audit rows.

Observability

Sentry (EU region) captures errors and performance traces. Structured logs via Pino feed into alerting pipelines.

AI Guardrails

All AI-generated changes require explicit broker approval via the Change Proposal workflow before any data mutation occurs.

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Hosting & Data Residency

All personal data processing remains within the EU/EEA or UK (an adequacy decision jurisdiction). No personal data is transmitted to US-based services in identifiable form.

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Regulatory Context

PensionsPortal.ie operates as a technology platform for pension trustees subject to:
  • IORP II Directive (2016/2341/EU) — transposed into Irish law via the IORP II Regulations 2021
  • GDPR — data minimisation, encryption, right of erasure, breach notification within 72 hours
  • Pensions Authority Guidance — fit-and-proper requirements, governance documentation
This document reflects the technical security posture of the platform. Trustees retain ultimate governance responsibility and must ensure their own operational security practices (access controls, device management, incident response) complement these platform controls.

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Security Pages