DCAISecurity and privacy#
What the gateway can reach#
- Only what you grant. The gateway calls your Foundry as the DCA Model Gateway Connector, using a Microsoft Entra token that your tenant issues. The connector has no secrets. Only the gateway's own Azure managed identity can act as it.
- The tenant is fixed. A connection always uses the Microsoft Entra tenant that owns the subscription, taken from your sign-in, never typed in. A token issued by your tenant cannot open another organization's resources, and theirs cannot open yours.
- Google Vertex AI works the same way. For a Vertex AI connection, your Google workload identity provider trusts only tokens that your own Microsoft Entra tenant issues to the connector. Google refuses a connection saved under another organization's tenant, even one that names your project, pool and provider. See Connect your Vertex AI.
- Within your organisation. For Azure AI Foundry, any subscription of your tenant can connect any resource the connector has a role on: the role assignment is the boundary, and it is tenant-wide. For Google Vertex AI the boundary is per subscription: the provider in your project is named after the subscription, and the gateway accepts no other name for it.
- Stop at any time. Disconnect on the Connect your Foundry page stops the gateway at once. Disabling or deleting the connector's enterprise application in your tenant stops it within five minutes. Removing its role assignment also ends access, but Azure can take hours to apply that: we measured more than two and a half hours.
Which role to grant#
| Role | What it allows | |
|---|---|---|
| DCA Model Gateway Inference (custom, definition) | Data-plane calls to your deployments only. No keys, no connection secrets, no access to the resource's settings. | Recommended |
| Cognitive Services User (built-in) | The same data-plane calls, plus listing the resource's keys and reading its settings | Simpler to assign; broader than the gateway needs |
The gateway never lists keys or reads settings with either role. The custom role makes that a guarantee rather than a promise. Creating it needs permission to create custom roles in your Azure subscription, such as Owner or User Access Administrator. See Connect your Foundry.
What the gateway stores#
| Data | Where | Kept |
|---|---|---|
| Your connection: tenant ID, endpoint and deployment names (Vertex AI: project ID and number, pool and provider IDs, locations, model IDs), per-key budgets, last test result | Azure Storage, East US, encrypted at rest, Entra-only access | While the subscription is active; deleted within an hour of cancellation |
| Key names you choose | Azure API Management, East US | With the key; deleted on an erasure request |
| Per-request telemetry: key ID, route, deployment name, data boundary, token counts, time | Azure Monitor, United States | 90 days |
| Usage reported to Microsoft Marketplace for billing | Microsoft Marketplace, plus our billing audit records | As required for invoicing and audit |
| Account records: subscription and plan, the signed-in user's name, e-mail address and Microsoft Entra IDs, consent records | Azure SQL, United States | See the privacy notice |
Not stored: prompts, responses, files, embeddings vectors, and Foundry keys. The gateway logs no request or response bodies, and caches none for connected Foundry deployments.
Where requests go#
Your request travels over TLS to the gateway (Azure API Management, East US), then over TLS to your Foundry endpoint or to
Google Vertex AI in your project. Model
inference runs in your deployment, in the region or data zone of that deployment's type. Use x-dca-data-boundary: us
together with US data-zone deployments to keep processing in the United States; see
Data boundary.
Your gateway keys#
- Treat each key like a password. Store it in a secret manager and never put it in client-side code.
- Give every customer or application its own key on the Tenant keys page, so you can cut one off without touching the others.
- If a key leaks, select Regenerate next to it. The old key stops working immediately. Revoke ends an additional key for good.
- Support never asks for your keys. Send your Marketplace subscription ID instead.
More#
- Privacy notice: https://www.dcassociatesgroup.com/privacy
- Reporting a vulnerability: SECURITY.md
Marketing consent. The optional product-news choice is recorded per subscription at activation and can be changed on the portal's preferences page (header link) at any time; every change is appended to the consent record and a withdrawal is effective immediately. Nothing else on the portal depends on it.