Overview

The Administration Panel is the essential tool for our Partners to work with your Verestro services. The main purpose of Admin Portal is to provide a web-based environment with the ability to manage customer service actions. The presented solution is prepared for customisation with Partner's brand.

This document is divided into sections that describe the various components of the system. Each section contains a screen presenting the functionality and a detailed description of the states occurring in it. 

The mechanisms described in this documentation are the most important ones for all web-based products that rely on Admin Portal. Some functionalities of Verestro have specific screens and processes that are not described here. Administration Panel is going through on-going development and changes to improve its performance so there may be differences in this description and real panel.

Purpose and scope

This product guide provides a high-level overview of Admin Panel Management. This document covers the following topics:

Terminology

This section explains a number of key terms and concepts used in this document.

Name	Description
Operator	User using the Portal regardless of role or level of rights.
Session token	Access to the system by a web application user is secured using a session token to uniquely associate the session with the user. It is required to perform any action.

Access and configuration

Access solutions

The access to Admin Portal in available in 3 ways:

Admin Portal is available on two environments:

▪ test environment (dev/UAT environment),
▪ production environment.

Sample of test environment (URL): https://admin-panel-nameofclient.verestro.dev/
Sample of production environment (URL): https://admin-panel-nameofclient.verestro.com/

IMPORTANT: There is also option to use custom domains.

Configuration of Admin Portal

Admin Panel has a several default parameters related to the time of each action. Table below describes particular action and time of session token.

Action	Description	Accessibility time
Reset password	Validity of link to reset password.	60 minutes
Create an account	Validity of link to first login to Admin Panel.	60 minutes
Login to the panel	Validity of code (4 numbers) to login.	10 minutes
User session	Session after successful login to the panel.	15 minutes
User lock	Time of lock due to incorrect password.	max 24h (until midnight next day)
Registration link	Validity of invitation link.	60 minutes

These are the default values, they can be changed at the request of the customer. 

Security

The systems offered by Verestro are fully secure, which is confirmed by current third-party certificates. As we store card and payment data we are obliged to comply with strict legal requirements. Card and user data are stored in a specially designed environment - Data Core. This environment is PCI DSS certified. The PCI-DSS standard guarantees the security of payment card data. It ensures that sensitive information is properly guarded and provides maximum security in the payment process. The portal operators' passwords are kept in a different database from the end users' data for security reasons. To encrypt them the algorithm Bcrypt with a cost of 10 is used. The cost parameter specifies a key expansion iteration count as a power of two, which is an input to the crypt algorithm.

We achieve high security standards by, among other things :

Architecture

Admin Panel uses Verestro's distributed systems to provide the highest quality of service. It is practically the best architectural solution these days. As mentioned in the previous chapter, the communication between services is completely secure, maintaining the highest security standards. This kind of system guarantees not only high efficiency, due to the division of responsibilities between the components, but also allows for easy and fast scaling of the system according to the customer's requirements.

Below is a sample architecture for the product VCP or in other words Admin Panel MDES along with MCBP Wallet.

Login procedure

First login (activation)

Users could be added only from the panel. It is not possible to register in the system without an invitation. Basic administrators accounts that can be used to create a user hierarchy are provided with the panel instance.

In order to create a new user account you have to log in to the panel using your e-mail address, which is user login. Then go to the "Administrators" tab and fill in the required data. After filling in the role, personal data and e-mail address there will be sent a welcome message with an activation link for new account.

Once the email send process is complete, the invited user will receive a message. It contains a welcome and an activation link - used to set a password to access the system.

Clicking on the link redirects to the login page, where the employee will have to set a password during the first logging in. The required password standard is a minimum of 8 characters, at least one digit, one capital letter and one letter.

Login procedure

Operator must provide correct pair – e-mail and password. If the provided login is incorrect, a message informing the employee of an error “Incorrect e-mail or password” and the possibility of another attempt will be displayed.

If the data provided is correct, an authentication code is sent. This is required to complete the next step of the two-step login.

As last step application asks for code. Sent code has set validity time. If code will not be provided in this time, login procedure must be started from first step.

Reset password procedure

In order to reset password, admin has to open the login page and click option “reset password” (located under e-mail and password inputs). In next step, admin must provide correct e-mail address.

If the provided e-mail is correct, reset password link will be send to the employee's company e-mail address.

Clicking on the link redirects to the reset password page, where the employee will have to provide his e-mail address and set a new password. The required password standard is a minimum of 8 characters, at least one digit, one capital letter and one small letter.

Main view

Once the authentication process is properly completed, the bank employee has access to the panel. He is shown the main screen of the system. Depending on the assigned rights group its appearance may vary. Different roles in the system have different tabs available. 

The components that make up the Admin Portal are:
1) Main menu contains aggregates as: customers, cards, devices, payment history, IBANs, project administration (administrators, visuals, logs).
2) Admin Panel adjusted to the client’s colours and logotype. 
3) Filters allows to select multiple filter options and display results that contain information all the selected criteria. 
4) List of the most important information referring to each aggregate (example: customers).  
5) Actions allows admin to change the status of aggregate or edit data.  

Operator administration

Roles and permissions

From the actions of the bank's operations team or call centre point of view, three types of authorization are characterized by diverse access levels have been created:
•    employee, 
•    manager, 
•    administrator. 

Above levels are characterized by privileges with access to operational functionalities, which significantly influence the portal operators. The basic tasks at this level is customer verification, data preview and potential editing. 

Below are the default function descriptions divided into areas.

Aggregate	Action	Admin	Manager	Employee
Portal management - Operators	View	x	x	-
	Create	x	x	-
	Edit	x	x	-
	Delete	x	x	-
	Lock	x	x	-
	Unlock	x	x	-

With the default setting of permissions according to the table above, the administrator can see operators in all roles in the list (including other admins, managers and employees) and can add operators with any role. The Manager, on the other hand, only can see operators with Employee status and can only create such operators.

Operators list

Administration Panel Accounts list contains filters and columns with dates. In this section detailed lists don’t occur. The filters are used for dynamic searching, such data as:  e-mail, first name, last name, group (available: admin, manager, employee). 

Basic list includes following information:

Parameter	Description
Group	Group determines the access level.
E-mail	Admin e-mail address.
First name	Admin first name.
Last name	Admin last name.
Status	Admin status (described in admin statuses part).
Actions	Action which can be performed on particular admin (described in admin actions part).

Account statuses

Referring to the above tables, the possible transition of operator states is presented in the diagram below.

Standard flow - operator is created in status invited (Admin Panel MDES/VCP scenario).

Alternative flow - operator is created in status inactive.

Accounts actions

Administration Panel user can perform the following actions for the particular user (admin, manager, employee):
a)    add admin/manager/employee – necessary to input following data: group (select: admin, manager, employee), first name, last name, e-mail. In order to confirm “Save” button should be clicked. Added user should receive e-mail with link to activate account and set the password. 

b)    edit admin/manager/employee – possible to change following data: group (select: admin, manager, employee), first name, last name, e-mail. There's no option to edit operator with status "invited", in this particular case it's necessary to delete invitation and add a new operator.

c)    lock admin/manager/employee – temporary lock of user.

Notifications in the system

This section contains all email messages that are sent in the system to the portal operator.

Emails from Admin Panel to operator.

Process	Topic	Details	Comment
Invitation to the system	Set password to administration panel.	Hello! You are receiving this e-mail because an account was created for you, and you need to set a new password. <button to set password> Regards, < NameOfClient >	Standard email sent when portal operator added new operator.
Login process	Login code.	Hello! Your login code: <code> Regards, < NameOfClient >	Standard AP email sent when portal operator entered correct email and password.
Reset password	Reset password to administration panel.	Hello! You are receiving this mail because someone initialized password reset for your account. If it was not you, you can ignore this mail. <button to reset password> Regards, <NameOfClient>	Standard Admin Panel email sent when portal operator uses "reset password" button on login page.
Additional password policy	Password expiration reminder.	Hello! Your password will expire in <NumerOfDays> days. Please change your password to avoid losing access to the portal. Regards, <NameOfClient>	Related to additional policy to force password changes.
Inactive account policy	Inactive account reminder.	Hello! Due to inactivity your account will be blocked in <NumerOfDays> days. Please log into the portal to avoid losing access to the portal. Regards, <NameOfClient>	Related to the additional policy of automatically deactivating unused accounts.

Additional features

This section focuses on additional functionality in the system. By default they are disabled, they can be enabled upon request during panel creation or panel version upgrade.

Token blacklisting 

For better security, a mechanism for blacklisting session tokens has been prepared. This makes it possible to prevent unauthorized access to the portal and data using the session token of a logged out user (if the token life has not expired yet). 

It should be noted that during the logout process the session token in the user's browser is destroyed, regardless of whether the blacklisting mechanism is enabled. Also, closing the browser deletes the token.

However, a theoretical scenario is that the user's token is intercepted and used for unauthorized access to the system. Access possible for the lifetime of the token. 

When this mechanism is enabled, the token is blacklisted (and therefore prevented from further use despite the active life time) and each query to the backend (API Admin Panel) checks whether the token used by the user is not blacklisted. 

Session extension popup 

Sometimes the session time may not be sufficient to perform the portal user's operations. For this reason a mechanism has been created to ask the user if there is a need to extend the current session. 

It should be noted that by default when half of the session time elapses and the user performs some action (moves to another tab, clicks a button) the session time is renewed. By session time renewal it is meant that a new session token is assigned to the user and the session time counter is restored to its default, maximum value.

When the mechanism is active at a certain time before the end of the session the user is asked if he needs more time (screen below). If user chooses affirmative answer, there is assigned a new session token and the session time is restored to the default, maximum. Selecting no closes the dialog. Not selecting an option will close the dialog when the session time expires and the user is logged out.

Tooltip for table row values

Depending on the resolution and screen size, the appearance of each screen may vary cosmetically. Admin Panel is responsive but values in tables can be of different length (up to 255 characters). It is not always possible to display the entire value in a single table cell. For this reason, a mechanism was created to display a tooltip for table cell values. 

The default mechanism is to show the user as many characters as fit into the table cell - depending on the screen size of the device. It is possible in this case to copy the whole, valid value of the cell. Unfortunately it is not possible to preview it by user in simple way - it is necessary to copy cell value e.g. to text document to know its characters that do not fit in the cell. 

By enabling described mechanism the tooltip is displayed when the user hovers the mouse over a particular value in the table and waits for 1 second without moving the mouse. The user can easily see the entire value of such a variable.
 

Password policies 

As it is extremely important for us to ensure the security of the portal operators' data and the data to which the operators have direct access, we are providing an additional policies for passwords.

Force password change  

The first of the additional policies that can be used on the admin instance of the panel is to force the operators to change the password every specified number of days. In the case of inactivity on the part of the operator the account is locked - its unlocking is possible through a password reset mechanism. Before the account is blocked, an email notification is sent about the need to change the password - the time when the email is to be sent is configurable. 

Force unique password   

A second, additional safeguard in password security policies is to prevent a user from setting a password that they have already used in the past. With this mechanism, it is possible to configure how many previous passwords should be excluded from reuse. Of course, for data security reasons, previously used passwords are not stored but only their unique hash, which is used for uniqueness comparison. 

Deactivate inactive accounts

In order to ensure the safety of the data contained on the portal, an automatic deactivation mechanism for unused accounts has been created. It allows to define the time without logging in after which the operator will be blocked. Unblocking the account is possible by using the password reset mechanism, which is tantamount to confirming your identity and access to your e-mail address.

Handling an unavailable service 

As Admin Panel consists of multiple services (as a reminder, individual services are responsible for the corresponding sections in the side menu), it is important to ensure the availability of the application when any of the individual components is not working (for example, due to a scheduled maintenance outage). For this reason, a mechanism for graying out unavailable services in the side menu has been implemented and enabled by default. If any product/service is temporarily unavailable, the portal operator can still use the functionality provided by the other services. In the case that the unavailable service becomes operational, the section becomes available again after refreshing the page.