Where does your data sit when you use Unloq?
The short answer
Your data stays where you choose: in your own cloud, or hosted securely in ours. Unloq reads the data you approve and does not change or delete it. What it adds is the record of every decision: what was decided, on what evidence, and what it delivered. Unloq can deploy into your AWS or Microsoft Azure tenancy, where it runs inside your VPC and reads your systems in place. Several companies raised this in our introductory calls over the past year, and one made it a condition that its data stay inside its own tenant.
What are the deployment options?
Unloq is cloud-neutral across AWS and Azure. You choose where Unloq runs:
In your cloud. Unloq ships as containers deployed into your cloud. Inside your own AWS or Azure tenancy, Unloq uses that cloud’s native security services, so the controls your team already runs apply to Unloq too.
Hosted with us. An environment we run for you, connected to your systems, with your data stored with us. For teams that cannot run Unloq themselves, or would rather not. Unloq reads your source systems read-only here as well.
Which option is safer depends on your team. A business with a strong cloud function will usually want Unloq in its own account, where its own controls already apply. A business with a small IT team may be better served by a vendor whose controls it has reviewed than by running another service itself. We have seen sensible teams choose each, and we do not think there is a right answer we could give you without knowing your team.
Who can access the data, and what does each answer show?
Access is by role: a CEO sees everything, while an account executive sees what their role allows. Your team agrees access with us during onboarding, and each answer shows what Unloq used to build it. Unloq runs with these controls:
Sign-in. Single sign-on through your existing identity provider (SSO / OIDC).
Access. Role-based access, checked on every query.
Encryption. Data is encrypted in transit and at rest. In your cloud, it can be protected with encryption keys you own and control.
Residency. In your cloud, your data is stored in the region you require, for example the UK or the EU.
Training. In your cloud, your data is never moved out to train anything.
Footprint. We take in only what a workflow needs, and reference rather than copy wherever we can.
Record. Every answer carries its working and the sources it used.
Of these, the working on each answer is the control a reviewer can test without taking our word for it. Ask a question in a demo, then open the plan Unloq made, the SQL that ran and the documents it cited, with the page and excerpt for each.
Can people see data they should not?
Role-based access is checked at the moment each query runs, so a person sees only what their role allows, whichever way they phrase the question. The example we hear is payroll. If payroll spreadsheets sit in a SharePoint folder Unloq can read, could a sales manager’s question pull from them? If the sales role has not been granted that folder, the role check stops it. The surer protection comes earlier, when your team decides what Unloq connects to: leave the payroll folder out, and a document Unloq never reads cannot turn up in any answer.
What do we keep when a proof ends?
In your cloud, you keep your data, your definitions and Unloq’s outputs, and continuity terms can go in the contract.
What this page does not cover
Connection to each system is covered on how Unloq connects to your data, and certifications on what a security review needs from Unloq. What Unloq does with your data once it is connected, from what happened to what it was worth, is on the platform overview.
Ask us your question
A data residency rule we have not covered is exactly the kind of thing to ask us your question about. Our AI engineering team works the question through with our technical founders and replies with an answer.
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