Location of customer data
When a customer signs up for On Demand, they select the region in which to run their On Demand organization. All computation is performed and all data is stored in the selected region. The currently supported regions can be found here: https://regions.quest-on-demand.com/.
Windows Azure Storage, including the Blobs, Tables, and Queues storage structures, are replicated three times in the same datacenter for resiliency against hardware failure. The data is replicated across different fault domains to increase availability. All replication datacenters reside within the geographic boundaries of the selected region.
See this Microsoft reference for more details: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/storage/common/storage-redundancy
Privacy and protection of customer data
The most sensitive customer data processed by On Demand Migration for Power BI is the Microsoft Entra ID and Power BI data including workspaces, datasets, reports, gateways, connections, users, and groups. On Demand Migration for Power BI does not store or deal with end-user passwords of Microsoft Entra ID objects.
- Power BI content may be cached temporarily during migration, but never stored after migration.
- Power BI will save passwords user have provided explicitly when creating connection profiles in secured Azure key vaults and encrypted at rest.
- Power BI metadata such as name, authorship and count of objects may be saved by product for troubleshooting purposes only. No actual content will be saved.
- All migration project data and logs are encrypted at rest.
To ensure that customer data is kept separate during processing, the following policies are strictly applied in On Demand Migration for Power BI:
- All temporarily artifacts created for each customer during migration is stored in separate Azure storage containers and will be saved for a maximum of 30 days for troubleshooting use. Temporary artifacts such as migration logs may contain metadata of objects, but never their content.
- This information is protected through the Azure built-in data-at-rest server-side encryption mechanism. It uses the strongest FIPS 140-2 approved block cipher available, Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) algorithm, with a 256-bit key.
- A separate Elasticsearch server instance is used for each customer.
- A separate isolated instance is used for every task.
- The integration of On Demand Migration for Power BI with Quest Migration Manager for Active Directory is secured by a secret that can be re-issued at any moment. Once re-issued, the original secret is immediately revoked.
More information about Azure queues, tables, and blobs:
- https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/storage/blobs/storage-blobs-introduction
- https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/security/security-storage-overview
- https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/storage/common/storage-service-encryption
Separation of customer data
A common concern related to cloud-based services is the prevention of commingling of data that belongs to different customers. On Demand Migration for Power BI has architected its solution to specifically prevent such data commingling by logically separating customer data stores.
Customer data are differentiated using a Customer Organization Identifier. The Customer Organization Identifier is a unique identifier obtained from the Quest On Demand Core that is created when the customer signs up with the application.
This identifier is used throughout the solution to ensure strict data separation of customers' data in Elasticsearch storage and during processing.
A separate Elasticsearch server instance is used for each customer.
Network communications
Internal network communication within Azure includes:
- Inter-service communication between On Demand Migration for Power BI components, On Demand Core and the On Demand Platform
- Communication to customer Microsoft Entra ID tenants
The following scheme shows the communication configuration between key components of On Demand Migration for Power BI.
Figure 2: Component Communication Architecture
The network communication is secured with HTTPS and is not visible to the external public internet.
Inter-service communication uses OAuth authentication using a Quest Microsoft Entra ID service account with the rights to access the services. No backend services of On Demand Migration for Power BI can be used by end-users.
On Demand Services accepts the following network communication from outside Azure:
- Access to On Demand Migration web UI.
- PowerShell cmdlets to access the On Demand Migration for Power BI backend. These PowerShell cmdlets are used internally by Quest Support in read-only mode to access customers' Quest On Demand organizations, migration projects, tasks, events, and object metadata for troubleshooting purposes only.
All external communication is secured with HTTPS.
The On Demand Migration for Power BI user interface uses OAuth authentication with JWT token issued to a logged in user.
PowerShell cmdlets used by Quest Support are using Microsoft Entra ID authentication to access the On Demand Migration for Power BI service. The user of the PowerShell API should be a Quest Microsoft Entra ID member with the appropriate role assigned.
There are no unsecured HTTP calls within On Demand Migration for Power BI.