Agency customer data enters DEMO through two inbound paths. The first is interactive: authorized agency users and administrators sign in to the public application portal through TLS to the AWS public application load balancer, authenticate via Microsoft Entra ID, and upload documents and records for analysis through the web tier into the application tier. The second path is programmatic: customer-managed tools submit documents and inference requests to DEMO through authenticated REST APIs exposed at the same load balancer, with the application tier validating, normalizing, and persisting the payloads to the same data stores.

Uploaded documents are stored in the S3 customer data bucket. Structured records (document metadata, collaboration records, user profiles, authorization data) are stored in the RDS PostgreSQL database. Submitted content is dispatched to the EKS embedding workers, which chunk each document, generate vector embeddings using the platform's self-hosted embedding model, and write the resulting vectors to the Aurora PostgreSQL vector store, tagged with the originating tenant. Inference requests are served by the EKS GPU inference tier, which retrieves only the requesting tenant's vectors, composes model input, and returns classification, summarization, extraction, or retrieval-augmented answers to the caller. Inference requests and responses are written to the Aurora MySQL audit log database for accountability, and are never used as training or fine-tuning input for models serving other tenants.

Internal data flows are constrained to within-AWS and Azure-internal paths. The web tier serves HTTP requests from the load balancer and forwards them to the application tier over a private subnet boundary. The application tier reads and writes the primary application database, the vector store, the audit log database, and the S3 customer data bucket, and dispatches asynchronous work to the EKS embedding and worker pods. Model artifacts and versions are pulled from the object-locked S3 model bucket by the inference tier at deployment time; container images are pulled from ECR. AWS Systems Manager Session Manager mediates administrative access from operator workstations to the management bastion (Windows Server 2022) without exposing inbound SSH or RDP. The Azure side hosts authentication metadata in Azure SQL Database, accessed by the Entra Connect synchronization VM during identity sync between the AWS Managed Microsoft AD directory and Microsoft Entra ID.

Data at rest is encrypted across six primary locations: customer documents in the S3 bucket (AWS KMS), structured application data in RDS PostgreSQL (AWS KMS, automated backups), tenant embeddings in the Aurora PostgreSQL vector store (AWS KMS, automated backups), audit and inference logs in Aurora MySQL (AWS KMS, continuous backup), model artifacts in the S3 model bucket (AWS KMS, object lock and versioning), and authentication metadata in Azure SQL Database (Azure-managed transparent data encryption, automatic backup). Container images reside in ECR (primary) and Azure Container Registry (backup), both with image signing and immutability.

Outbound data flows are constrained to within-boundary destinations, customer-facing delivery, and one external metadata interface. Microsoft Sentinel, Microsoft Defender for Cloud, and Microsoft Entra ID are part of the authorization boundary and reachable through the inter-cloud IPsec VPN or Microsoft Azure Government service endpoints; security telemetry forwarded to these services does not leave the authorization boundary. Customer-facing exports (analysis results, document sets, records retention packages, activity reports) are delivered to agency administrators through the same authenticated portal that handles inbound, or pulled via the same authenticated REST APIs.

The single flow that crosses the authorization boundary outbound is to Stratus GRC-ITSM (HALOGRC), an external FedRAMP-authorized SaaS. Over an authenticated TLS API connection, DEMO sends operational metadata only: asset inventory attributes, vulnerability scan findings, POA&M and deviation records, change requests, access review results, incident records, and Key Security Indicator validation results. No agency customer content, document text, embedding vector, or inference request or response is transmitted to HALOGRC. Customer integrations between DEMO and third-party customer-managed tools are the customer's responsibility to operate and secure, and do not extend the DEMO authorization boundary.
