Security and Canadian data residency
A practical product capability for Canadian accounting and bookkeeping practices.
SpidNums hosts all firm and client data in Canada — Supabase's ca-central-1 region on Postgres 17 — with a PIPEDA-aligned posture. Access is locked down with row-level security and service-role-mediated queries, every firm's data is isolated per tenant behind a signed cookie that fails closed, rich text is sanitised, and client portal sessions are JWT-verified.
Data hosted in Canada (ca-central-1)
PIPEDA-aligned posture
Fail-closed per-tenant isolation
Why Canadian data residency matters to firms
An accounting firm's database is among the most sensitive a small business holds: SINs, financial statements, payroll details, CRA correspondence. Under PIPEDA the firm stays accountable for that data wherever it is processed, and "where is it stored?" is now a standard client question.
A firm that can answer "in Canada" in one sentence removes a due-diligence hurdle that firms on foreign-hosted tools have to explain around.
Where SpidNums data lives and how it is protected
All data is hosted in Canada, in Supabase's ca-central-1 region, on Postgres 17. Database access is locked down with row-level security, and application access is mediated through the service role rather than reaching tables directly.
User-entered rich text — engagement-letter terms, notes — is sanitised, and client portal sessions are JWT-verified.
How firms are isolated from each other
Isolation is per tenant and fail-closed. A signed tenant cookie scopes every request to exactly one firm; a request that cannot be attributed to a tenant is refused, not defaulted. File storage is namespaced per tenant as well.
Support access is deliberate rather than ambient: super-admin impersonation exists for troubleshooting and is audited.
What this lets a firm tell its clients
Plainly: your data is stored in Canada, only our firm's workspace can reach it, and your portal access shows only your own file. That is a posture a practitioner can explain to a client without a security team in the room.
What ships in the module
- All data is hosted in Supabase's ca-central-1 region in Canada, on Postgres 17.
- Row-level security locks the database down, with application access mediated through the service role.
- Tenant isolation is fail-closed via a signed tenant cookie; file storage is namespaced per tenant.
- Client portal sessions are JWT-verified and user-entered rich text is sanitised.
- Super-admin support impersonation is audited.
Related features
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Frequently asked questions
Where is SpidNums data hosted?
In Canada. All firm and client data lives in Supabase's ca-central-1 region on Postgres 17. Residency is the same for every firm on the platform — there is no offshore tier or region choice to get wrong.
Is SpidNums PIPEDA compliant?
SpidNums is built with a PIPEDA-aligned posture: Canadian hosting, fail-closed tenant isolation, scoped client portal access and audited support impersonation. PIPEDA compliance is ultimately an obligation on the organisation handling personal information, so a firm's own policies complete the picture — but the residency and access-control questions clients ask are answered by the platform.
Can another firm on the platform see our data?
No. Every request is scoped to one tenant by a signed cookie, and the design fails closed: a request that cannot be attributed to a tenant is refused rather than given a default. File storage is namespaced per tenant on the same principle.
Can SpidNums staff access our workspace?
Only deliberately, and it leaves a trail. Super-admin impersonation exists so support can reproduce what a firm is seeing, and that impersonation is audited. There is no ambient staff access to firm workspaces in normal operation.
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