Security Update and Migration Announcement - Additional Information

Security Update and Migration Announcement - Additional Information


Published: March 17th, 2022

Affinaquest (formerly HEPdata) is committed to providing the most secure digital access to our clients and their donors. We strive to balance between customer ease of use and maintaining high security standards.

In line with our goal of prioritizing security and upholding current industry standards, we will  only  be accepting TLS1.2 and above connections for all products starting June 17, 2022 .

In addition, on June 17, 2022 , we will  only  allow https access to our eMatch Donor Link products. Both updates may affect your IT team's settings.

Please forward this information to your IT team to identify if any further action to update your settings needs to occur.

Additionally, we are completing a server migration for our products and will be performing maintenence on May 4th, 2022 from 9 AM ET-5 PM ET . We anticipate minimal client impact during the migration.

The Affinaquest support team has compiled several answers to questions that you may have to help guide you through any necessary changes required by your team:

How do I figure out if I am not on TLS1.2 or greater? Where do I look to see if I use TLS1.2?

TLS is a newer encryption standard used in many data products today which want to securely exchange data. Your IT department will know what TLS is and be able to identify what version you are using. If you are only accessing our products via a web browser, please be sure to use the latest version of Chrome, Safari, or Firefox for best performance. For most of our clients, this is making sure your browser is up to date. For the few clients who are interfacing with our API, you'll want to be sure you are using modern security protocals when calling API endpoints.

I am using your API, and I'm not sure how to check for or update to TLS1.2.

Our team is happy to help you directly. Please either create a support ticket with your request or email awalters@ssbinfo.com .

How do I figure out if we use https with our eMatch Donor Link? Where do I look to see if we use https?

As many of our eMatch Donor Link clients have embedded their service into their web pages through iframes or have referenced an external page via hyper link, this process will require your web development team to inspect the URL of the eMatch Donor Link you're referencing inside of your HTML.

Follow these steps below:

1. Visit the web page your eMatch Donor Link or hyper link is referenced.
2. Inspect the HTML element by right clicking on your eMatch Donor Link widget, hyperlink, or button and then click "Inspect":

3. The previous step will open your browser's console where you'll be able to retrieve your eMatch Donor Link's URL. For iframes, look for the URL referenced by "src". If inspecting either a hyperlink or button, look for the URL referenced after "href". The URL referenced will either say http or https:


4. If the URL referenced begins with https, there will be no further action required by your team. If you see http, your team will need to update the src or href to reference "https" instead of "http".

What will happen June 17th if I don't switch to TLS1.2/https?

On June 17th, we will be requiring that you connect with our products only using TLS1.2 and above, and the secure https format. If you are attemping to connect with us using older versions your calls to our database and/or products will fail until updated to send a call in these newer, more secure versions.

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