Modern laboratories operate within complex digital ecosystems—spanning LIMS, ELNs, data lakes, and specialized data stores—where secure, compliant, and scalable data exchange is critical. LDAS is designed to integrate seamlessly with these platforms, whether deployed on-premises or in the cloud, while upholding the highest standards of security and regulatory compliance.

This section outlines how LDAS ensures secure connectivity, robust authentication, and continuous protection of data through cloud-native architecture, OWASP-aligned practices, OAuth 2.0-based access control, and DevSecOps integration—making it a trusted foundation for scientific data management.

Cloud-Native, Secure, and Compliant by Design

LDAS is built on a robust cloud-native architecture, engineered to deliver secure, scalable, and resilient performance across diverse deployment environments. Security and compliance are embedded by design, ensuring operational integrity and alignment with regulatory standards.

Regulatory Compliance: LDAS adheres to FDA 21 CFR Part 11 maintaining high standards for data integrity, traceability, and audit readiness.
AWS-Powered Security: Leveraging AWS’s built-in security features, LDAS ensures comprehensive protection through:
- Encryption at rest and in transit
- Identity and Access Management (IAM)
- Automated threat detection
Network Security Architecture:
- Private Subnet Deployment: All critical components are deployed within private subnets, minimizing exposure to public networks.
- Secure Outbound Access: NAT Gateway enables controlled outbound internet connectivity without compromising internal security.
- Access Control Enforcement: VPC security groups and IAM roles ensure strict access boundaries and service isolation.
Controlled Access: Infrastructure access is restricted via secure VPN connections, ensuring only authenticated personnel can interact with sensitive resources.
Independent Vulnerability Assessments: LDAS undergoes third-party vulnerability assessments to proactively identify risks and maintain alignment with industry best practices.

OWASP Compliance: A Cornerstone of LDAS Security

LDAS’s security framework aligns with the OWASP Application Security Verification Standard (ASVS) 4.0, ensuring robust protection against the most critical and prevalent software vulnerabilities and forms the foundation of the secure-by-design approach.

LDAS Security Architecture

Data Protection and Access Control

LDAS ensures that sensitive data is protected at every stage of its lifecycle.

Advanced Encryption: Sensitive data is encrypted using AES-GCM, ensuring both confidentiality and integrity without requiring additional padding or hashing. Both frontend and backend components use Java Cryptographic Extension (JCE) to ensure this across stack.
Role-Based Access Control (RBAC): Access to sensitive data is strictly governed by RBAC policies, ensuring only authorized users can view or modify protected information.
E-Signatures & Audit Trails: : All critical operations are secured with e-signature functionality and logged through a comprehensive audit trail, enabling full traceability and accountability.
Secure Backups: : All critical operations are secured with e-signature functionality and logged through a comprehensive audit trail, enabling full traceability and accountability.

Infrastructure and Deployment Security

LDAS leverages modern deployment practices to ensure consistency, isolation, and resilience across environments.

Kubernetes-Based Architecture: System components are logically isolated using Kubernetes namespaces, with gateways and firewall security groups controlling traffic flow and access.
Automated Terraform Deployments: Infrastructure provisioning and updates are automated using Terraform, ensuring consistent, repeatable, and auditable deployments.
Controlled Manual Deployments: Deployments are executed under secure conditions to maintain compliance.
Container Security: Microservices are deployed in hardened containers that are configured with least privilege firewall configuration to minimize exposure.

Credential and Identity Management

Secure Credential Storage: User Credentials are securely stored using industry-standard hashing and salting techniques.

Client-Side and Communication Security

HTTPS with TLS 1.3: All external communications are encrypted using TLS 1.3, ensuring secure client connectivity and data transmission.
Customer Certificate Integration: During installation, valid customer certificates are configured within a service mesh security to establish trusted, encrypted connections.
Cache Control: All HTTPS responses include Cache-Control: no-cache headers to prevent browser caching of sensitive data.

Secure API and Input Validation

LDAS ensures secure data exchange and robust input handling across all interfaces.

Layered API Security:External requests are routed through a centralized REST API gateway, while internal services communicate via gRPC over mutual TLS (mTLS) through an inner gateway.
Web Security Headers:LDAS enforces Content Security Policy (CSP), X-Content-Type-Options, and X-XSS-Protection headers to mitigate common web threats.
Secure Query Handling:The system uses private DTOs, form-data, and parameterized queries to prevent injection attacks and ensure secure data handling.
HTTP Parameter Pollution Mitigation: Input validation mechanisms are in place to prevent parameter manipulation and injection risks, reducing the risk of parameter pollution attacks.
Localized Output Encoding: File contents have specific encoding, ensuring preservation of the user's chosen character set and locale, allowing for the safe handling of any Unicode character point.

Error Handling and Logging

Privacy-First Logging: Sensitive data is never logged. Logs include detailed error codes and UTC timestamps, while excluding API payloads and confidential content.
Robust Exception Handling: A centralized error handler captures unhandled exceptions, and all user actions are recorded in a detailed audit trail for full accountability.

Secure and Scalable Authentication with OAuth 2.0

LDAS employs OAuth 2.0, the industry-standard protocol for delegated access, to deliver secure, scalable, and user-friendly authentication. This approach allows third-party applications to interact with user resources without exposing sensitive credentials, ensuring both flexibility and protection.

Authentication is managed through a centralized Identity Federation platform, which orchestrates the full authentication lifecycle:

User Authentication
Token Issuance and Validation
Session Management
Client Credentials Flow for Service-to-Service Authentication

During login, the identity federation validates session tokens to ensure only authenticated sessions are permitted. All tokens are stateless, securely encrypted, and digitally signed- eliminating the need for manual token handling or decryption within the application code.

By offloading identity and access management to the federation, LDAS benefits from a secure, standards-compliant, and extensible authentication framework—reducing development overhead while enhancing security and user experience.

Seamless Security Integration with DevSecOps

LDAS is built with security embedded throughout the software development lifecycle, following DevSecOps principles that make security a shared responsibility across development, operations, and security teams. This proactive approach ensures vulnerabilities are identified early, enabling secure and agile delivery without compromising speed or quality.

To support continuous security assurance, LDAS aligns with the NIST cybersecurity framework and integrates multi-source vulnerability intelligence from trusted databases such as the National Vulnerability Database (NVD), Sonatype OSS Index, and Open Source Vulnerabilities (OSV).

Key Highlights of Our DevSecOps Strategy:

Automated CI/CD Pipelines: Secure and consistent deployments are triggered automatically based on code changes or authorized actions, ensuring rapid delivery without compromising security.
Robust Deployment Protocols: Strict controls and validation mechanisms are in place to maintain integrity and compliance throughout the deployment process.

Integrated Security Practices:

Pre-Commit Hooks – Automatically detect hardcoded secrets and security keys before code is committed.
SAST (Static Application Security Testing) – Analyses source code for vulnerabilities during development.
SCA (Software Composition Analysis) – Identifies and manages risks in open-source dependencies.
DAST (Dynamic Application Security Testing) – Conducts runtime testing and penetration testing to uncover real-world vulnerabilities.
Container Security – Scans Docker images for known vulnerabilities to ensure secure containerized deployments.

This comprehensive DevSecOps framework empowers LDAS to deliver secure, high-quality software at speed— supporting continuous compliance, reducing operational risk, and reinforcing trust across stakeholders.

Security & Networking:

All critical resources are deployed in private subnets.
NAT Gateway enables secure outbound internet access.
VPC security groups and IAM roles enforce strict access control and isolation.