The DEMO authorization boundary includes all application code, model artifacts, configuration, data stores, network resources, and security services operated to deliver the Meridian AI Platform service. DEMO is a multi-tenant deployment; within the service, tenant-scoped RBAC and data-segmentation controls isolate each agency customer's documents, embeddings, and inference history from every other tenant. The system is deployed across two government-only cloud environments: AWS GovCloud (us-gov-west-1) and Microsoft Azure Government (usgovvirginia).

The AWS GovCloud footprint includes the public-facing application load balancer with TLS termination, the web tier (Ubuntu 22.04 nginx reverse proxy), the application tier (Amazon Linux 2023 Spring Boot service), the model inference tier (EKS GPU node group serving the platform's self-hosted models), the asynchronous document-processing and embedding workers (EKS pods), a management bastion (Windows Server 2022 jumpbox), the primary application database (RDS PostgreSQL 15.4), the vector store holding tenant embeddings (Aurora PostgreSQL 15.4 with pgvector), the audit log database (Aurora MySQL 8.0), customer document storage (S3 bucket), model artifact and version storage (S3 bucket with object lock), the primary container registry (ECR), and the AWS Managed Microsoft AD directory service to which the system's compute hosts are domain-joined.

The Azure Government footprint includes the Entra Connect hybrid identity sync host (Windows Server 2022) that synchronizes the AWS Managed Microsoft AD directory into Microsoft Entra ID, the authentication metadata database (Azure SQL Database), the admin portal load balancer with WAF v2 (Azure Application Gateway), the backup container registry (Azure Container Registry), and the Microsoft Defender for Cloud sensor (Azure Container Instance), which monitors workloads in both the Azure Government and AWS GovCloud footprints via Defender for Cloud's multi-cloud connector.

DEMO leverages two FedRAMP-authorized cloud service providers: AWS GovCloud (US) at FedRAMP High and Microsoft Azure Government at FedRAMP High. Microsoft Entra ID (consumed via the Microsoft Azure Government tenant) provides the identity provider, Microsoft Defender for Cloud provides extended detection and response with cross-cloud workload protection, and Microsoft Sentinel provides SIEM. Customer access to DEMO is via TLS to the public application load balancer; administrative access is via the Azure Application Gateway with WAF v2 and Entra-enforced multi-factor authentication.

Stratus GRC-ITSM (HALOGRC) is an external FedRAMP-authorized Software as a Service used to operate the security and compliance program for DEMO. It sits OUTSIDE the DEMO authorization boundary and does not store, process, or transmit agency customer content; the interface is an authenticated outbound API connection carrying operational metadata only.

HALOGRC is nonetheless a Component of this system description, because DEMO's management and operational control implementations execute in it: asset inventory maintenance, vulnerability and POA&M lifecycle tracking, continuous monitoring, change management, access review recording, incident response tracking, and Key Security Indicator validation. Implementation Statements attributed to HALOGRC therefore describe how those controls are satisfied, with control origination reflecting a service inherited from an external authorized provider. No confidentiality or integrity control protecting agency customer data is inherited from HALOGRC, since customer content never reaches it.

The authorization boundary excludes Stratus GRC-ITSM (HALOGRC) as described above, agency customer endpoint devices, customer-side identity providers federated into Microsoft Entra ID, customer cloud environments, customer-managed tooling that integrates with DEMO through inbound or outbound APIs, and any third-party foundation-model API not hosted within the boundary.
