Security & Data Protection

DefenceLens helps organisations research UK and European defence procurement. The notices, buyers and awards on the platform are public information. Your account, your saved searches and your team's watchlists are not. This page explains how we protect them, and what DefenceLens is and isn't designed to hold. It describes only controls that are in place today.

Your data is private

Your private searches and account information are not visible to other DefenceLens customers.

• Saved searches and alerts belong to the individual user who created them.
• Team watchlists are shared only within your own organisation's team. Team members can see who else is on the team.
• Every request for private information is checked against your account and your organisation.

Secure access

• Connections to DefenceLens are protected using TLS encryption.
• Passwords are protected using salted cryptographic hashing and are never stored in plaintext.
• Sign-in sessions use cookies that are only sent over encrypted connections and can't be read by scripts running in the page. Sessions expire after a period of inactivity.
• API credentials are stored as cryptographic hashes rather than retaining the original key. A new key is shown to you once, when you create it.

Hosting

The DefenceLens application and primary customer database are hosted on UK infrastructure. Some supporting services, such as content delivery, email, payments and off-site backup storage, are provided by specialist third parties and may involve processing outside the UK.

Payments

Payments are securely processed by Stripe. DefenceLens does not store your payment-card details; we keep only the references needed to link your subscription to your account.

Backups

DefenceLens maintains local and off-site backups to support service recovery.

Services we rely on

Like most software services, DefenceLens uses specialist providers for parts of the service: infrastructure and content delivery, email delivery, optional sign-in with Google, payments, website analytics, and off-site backup storage.

Procurement data comes from public sources including Find a Tender, Contracts Finder, TED (Tenders Electronic Daily) and GOV.UK. DefenceLens retrieves public data from these sources; your account information and searches are not sent to them.

What DefenceLens is designed for

DefenceLens is designed for publicly available procurement information and your organisation's own commercial research. It is not accredited to handle classified or protectively marked government information.

Please do not enter any of the following into DefenceLens, including in search terms, saved-search names or team details:

• information classified SECRET or TOP SECRET
• information marked OFFICIAL-SENSITIVE or carrying any other government protective marking
• MOD Identifiable Information
• export-controlled technical information

How we approach security

We review DefenceLens's security controls on an ongoing basis. As further controls and independent certifications are put in place, we will publish them on this page.