Architecture Standards

Introduction

The mission of architecture is to ensure that IT and business are in harmony, facilitating innovation, operational efficiency, and continuous support for the organization’s strategic goals.

Objectives

• Strategic Alignment: Harmonize IT initiatives with business objectives.
• Operational Efficiency: Improve process efficiency and reduce waste.
• Innovation and Agility: Facilitate quick adaptation to market changes.
• Risk Management: Reduce operational and security risks through proactive management.
• Standardization: Promote the use of standards and best practices to ensure consistency.

This document gives a structured overview of the main definition of Patria Architecture. Architecture is based on a set of core principles and organized into views that give the details of specific perspectives.

Architecture Principles

Reliability

• Availability and reliability: Ensure high availability, resilience, and robustness of solutions through processes, standards, and tools that ensure business continuity and quickly recover from failures.
• Cybersecurity: Treat cybersecurity as part of a solution by design, incorporating the standards and solutions necessary to ensure the reliability of the systems developed or purchased.
• Security and Compliance: Implement security measures to monitor and protect data, control changes, and comply with relevant laws and industry standards (e.g., GDPR).

Efficiency

• Simple Operations: Simplify, streamline, and harmonize processes using digitalization, automation, and self-service whenever possible. Prioritize reuse, then buy, then build.
• Standardization: Emphasize the creation of standard solutions to avoid duplicating effort for each new requirement, promoting efficiency and consistency.
• Automation (DevOps): Use automation to check integrity, test, deploy, scale, and manage systems efficiently and consistently.
• Leverage Outsourcing: Utilize third-party services where scale can be achieved, selecting leading providers that offer support across markets and asset classes.

Expandability

• Scalability and Flexibility: Design solutions that support customization and scaling for various asset classes and markets, minimizing manual processing dependencies.
• Interoperability and Integration: Implement a single baseline core solution that facilitates the integration of satellite systems, ensuring seamless business processes and data flows. Avoid point-to-point or star integrations.
• Modularity: Minimize dependencies between different components and systems to allow independent evolution and potential component substitution. Use microservices as a primary approach.
• Low platform customization: Keep platforms and solutions as close to their standard version, minimizing customizations and avoiding maintenance and evolution problems.
• Reuse: Create reusable components, such as libraries, frameworks, or microservices, that can be leveraged across different projects or systems.

Data-Driven

• Data-Driven Decisions: Establish an effective data platform and use analytics to derive actionable insights, maintaining a top-down corporate position on data requirements.
• Data Management: Ensure data integrity and interoperability between distinct architecture components, granting cohesion and minimizing the number of controls.
• Data Security and Privacy: Implement policies and tools to manage security and privacy accesses, ensuring segregation of duties and protection of internal assets while allowing for collaboration and data sharing.
• Data Democratization: Enable broad access to data across the organization, empowering employees at all levels to make informed decisions based on accurate and timely data using the corporate tools and policies.

Innovation

• Agility and Speed to Market: Enable rapid development and deployment of new services and features to respond quickly to market changes or customer demands.
• Emerging Technology Adoption: Proactively explore, validate, and integrate emerging technologies to drive innovation and create competitive advantages.

Attractiveness

• Great User Experience: Design systems with a focus on user experience (UX), ensuring ease of use, accessibility, and satisfaction.
• Customer Centricity: Lead with a client-focused approach, leveraging unique differentiators and consistently upholding front-to-back processing standards.

Transparency and Documentation

• Documentation: Maintain thorough and up-to-date architectural documentation to facilitate understanding and informed decision-making.
• Promote Transparency: Ensure access to architectural documentation to facilitate collaboration and continuous evolution.
• Clarity and Simplicity: Design and develop simple solutions, eliminating redundant elements and unnecessary components to reduce complexity.

Cybersecurity by Architecture

In line with the principles of reliability, risk management, and standardization, this chapter ensures that cybersecurity is incorporated as an essential and cross-cutting component of the organization’s architectural design. For detailed implementation specifications see CSAF-001 Cybersecurity Architecture Controls Framework (CACF).

Authentication and Access Control (IAM)

• All solutions must implement federated and multi-factor authentication (MFA) using the corporate standard platform (EntraID).
• User provisioning and deprovisioning processes must be fully automated and auditable.
• The principle of least privilege and segregation of duties must be applied across all systems.

Data Encryption

• All sensitive data must be encrypted in transit using secure protocols (TLS 1.2 or higher).
• Data at rest must be protected using AES-256 encryption as the minimum standard.
• Cryptographic keys must be managed through a centralized system with established rotation periods.

Infrastructure Hardening

• All platforms and systems must be configured according to industry-recognized hardening guidelines (CIS, STIGs).
• Security patches must be applied within the defined timeframe following their release. For detailed implementation guidelines, refer to the Security Patching Policy (Doc-SEC-001).
• Solutions must implement logical and physical network segmentation to minimize the attack surface.

Secure Session Management

• Applications must implement robust session security controls including expiration policies, token regeneration mechanisms, and protection against session fixation attacks. For implementation specifications, see the Application Security Framework (Doc-SEC-002).
• Cookies must be configured with appropriate security attributes: HttpOnly, Secure, and SameSite.
• Systems must implement account lockout mechanisms after multiple failed authentication attempts, with comprehensive logging.

Monitoring and Logging

• All architectural components must log security-relevant events to a centralized monitoring system.
• Logs must be tamper-resistant, encrypted, and retained according to the organizational retention policy.
• Integration with SIEM solutions is recommended to enable anomaly detection, alert correlation, and incident response capabilities.

!!! note All security controls outlined in this architecture will be verified as part of the mandatory project architectural review process.

Architecture Models