Data security in transit

[brockett_svusd]

Hello,

I'm trying to gather some information to be able to report accurately to leadership.

The goal:
We want to create and publish PowerBI reports for certain employees to be able to view. Because of the cost of licensing PowerBI Premium site-wide (or SQL Server with Software Assurance), the intent is to use PowerBI Pro (viewer) and Premium Per User (creator) licenses, which I understand to be only usable with the cloud service.

The question:
If we use the cloud service, we need a data gateway running on-prem in order to feed local SQL server data to the service so the reports can access. The documentation seems to show that this traffic uses HTTPS to transmit the data between the gateway and the cloud service. How secure is this transit? Is the on-prem data safe if someone breaches the cloud tenant, or captures traffic in flight?

[GilbertQ]

Hi @brockett_svusd 

The data is encrypted at all times, except when it shown in the browser (And that is in an HTTPS connection). In terms of your gateway it sits within your network so if you keep it secure all the data will be secure.

[brockett_svusd]

Thanks for your response @GilbertQ. Just to be double-triple sure, when you say the data is encrypted at all times does that mean it's transferred with encryption between the SQL server and gateway, and again between the gateway and the PowerBI cloud? Does that rely on any specific encryption settings on the SQL server, gateway or PowerBI? Also do you know what type of encryption is used?

[GilbertQ · Accepted solution]

Hi @brockett_svusd 

If your SQL Server has got encrption enabled then it will be encrypted going from SQL Server to the Gateway. It is encrypted from the Gateway to the Power BI Service.

The gateway uses HTTPS Encryption.