Security Model

How Restate Cloud BYOC secures the control channel, infrastructure, and customer data.

Restate Cloud BYOC is designed around three principles: least privilege, no standing access to your cloud account, and customer ownership of infrastructure. Restate never holds your cloud provider credentials; management access is limited to your managed Kubernetes API endpoint via a scoped, revocable token.

Control channel

The BYOC deployment has three network connections, all initiated from within your account:

Connection	Direction	Protocol	Purpose
Deployment agent → Restate control plane	Egress from your account	HTTPS (long-polling)	Pulls provisioning and management jobs
Restate control plane → Kubernetes API	Inbound to cluster API endpoint	HTTPS with bearer token	Manages Restate environments (CRDs, namespaces)
Metrics collector → Restate metrics store	Egress from your account	HTTPS	Ships operational metrics for monitoring and alerting

The deployment agent uses an egress-only polling model — it reaches out to Restate’s control plane to check for work. Restate’s control plane never initiates connections into your account for provisioning or management operations.

Restate’s control plane connects to your Kubernetes API to manage Restate environments. This connection uses a bearer token scoped to a limited Kubernetes RBAC role. You can restrict access to the Kubernetes API endpoint by IP allowlisting.

The token can manage RestateCluster resources and namespaces, and write the in-cluster signing-key Secrets it provisions — but it cannot read existing Secrets in your cluster. Revoking the token disables management while leaving running environments untouched.

What crosses the control channel

Sent to your cluster:

Category	Examples
Environment manifests	RestateCluster CRDs specifying resource limits, replicas, configuration
Container image references	Image tags (pulled from registry by cluster, not transferred over control channel)
Configuration	Restate server configuration (non-sensitive)
Signing keys	Public keys for request authentication (stored as Kubernetes Secrets in-cluster)

Received from your cluster:

Category	Examples
Health status	Pod readiness, cluster status
Resource metrics	CPU/memory usage, storage utilization
Environment metadata	Version info, replica count

What does NOT cross the control channel:

• Customer application data or invocation payloads
• State stored in Restate
• Customer secrets or credentials
• Application logs (retained in your account)

Bootstrap security

The foundation template is a standard CloudFormation stack (AWS) or ARM template (Azure) that you deploy yourself. It creates scoped roles for the deployment agent.

AWS

The CloudFormation template creates an IAM role for the deployment agent with the following permissions, scoped to the install’s resources:

Permission	Scope	Purpose
Resource management	Install resources	Create and manage EKS, VPC, S3, and supporting resources
EKS cluster admin	Install’s EKS cluster	Deploy Helm charts and Kubernetes manifests via the Kubernetes API
Resource provider registration	Subscription (AWS account)	Register required AWS service providers

All IAM roles follow least-privilege principles and are scoped to the resources created by the stack.

Azure

The ARM template creates a managed identity for the deployment agent (a Virtual Machine Scale Set) with the following role assignments:

Role	Scope	Purpose
Contributor	Resource group	Create and manage AKS, VNet, storage, and supporting resources
Role Based Access Control Administrator	Resource group	Create downstream role assignments (Key Vault access, network, DNS)
Azure Kubernetes Service RBAC Cluster Admin	Resource group	Deploy Helm charts and Kubernetes manifests via Azure RBAC
Custom: resource provider registration	Subscription	Register required Azure resource providers (*/register/action only)

The “Role Based Access Control Administrator” role is required because the deployment agent creates these downstream role assignments during infrastructure provisioning:

Downstream role	Assigned to	Purpose
Key Vault Secrets User	AKS Secrets Store CSI driver	Mount the Restate region secret key from Key Vault into pods
Network Contributor	AKS cluster identity	Manage load balancers and network resources
DNS Zone Contributor	cert-manager identity	Create DNS records for TLS certificate validation

All roles are scoped to the install’s resource group, except the resource provider registration role which is subscription-scoped but limited to */register/action.

“Role Based Access Control Administrator” is narrower than “Owner” — it can only manage role assignments, not create or delete resources. It is the minimum privilege required to create the downstream assignments listed above.

Infrastructure security

Compute

Kubernetes clusters run on dedicated cloud-managed virtual machines:

Layer	AWS	Azure
Compute	EC2 instances (Nitro hypervisor)	Azure VMs (Hyper-V isolated)
Container runtime	containerd	containerd
Kubernetes	Amazon EKS (managed control plane)	Azure AKS (managed control plane)
Architecture	ARM64 (Graviton / Ampere)	ARM64 (Ampere)

Instance security features include IMDSv2 enforcement (AWS), encrypted storage at rest (AES-256), and no local ephemeral storage (all data on network-attached volumes).

Patching

Component	Method	Cadence
Node OS	Automated drift detection	Promptly after a new AMI/image is released
Kubernetes	Managed cloud provider upgrades	Per provider schedule, coordinated with customer
Restate components	Rolling deployment	As releases are published
Container images	Image updates	As vulnerabilities are patched

Vulnerabilities are triaged and prioritized by severity, with critical issues fast-tracked ahead of routine maintenance.

Network isolation

Each BYOC deployment runs in its own VPC with private subnets across multiple availability zones. Restate environments are isolated via Kubernetes NetworkPolicies:

• Ingress: only the ingress proxy and metrics collector can reach environment pods
• Egress: DNS, peer nodes in the same namespace, allowlisted VPC endpoints, tunnel, and the public internet
• Cross-namespace: blocked by default

All in-cluster traffic between components is encrypted with mTLS via a service mesh.

Service connectivity

Restate environments invoke your service handlers over HTTP. Supported connectivity patterns:

Pattern	How it works
VPC services	Private IP or internal load balancer via VPC endpoints. All traffic stays within the VPC.
FaaS (Lambda)	Invoked via VPC endpoints with IAM authentication. No public internet traversal.
Tunnel	For services in other VPCs or networks. Tunnel clients connect to the BYOC VPC via a VPC endpoint.

Data sovereignty

All customer data remains in your cloud account:

• Invocation payloads, stored state, and snapshots never leave your account
• Application logs are retained in-cluster and accessible to you
• Restate collects only operational metadata (health, resource utilization, environment configuration) for monitoring and management

Audit

Log type	Location	Retention
Kubernetes audit logs	Your CloudWatch / Azure Monitor	Customer-controlled
VPC flow logs	Your S3 / Azure Storage	Customer-controlled
Application logs	In-cluster	Customer-controlled
Control plane operations	Restate audit trail	Per Restate retention policy

Customer controls

Action	Available?	Process
Revoke Restate access	Yes	Remove the Kubernetes bearer token; environments continue running but management is disabled
IP-restrict cluster API	Yes	Configure Kubernetes API server allowlist
Audit management operations	Yes	Kubernetes audit logs capture all control plane actions
Request emergency patching	Yes	File a priority support ticket; Restate SLA applies
Force node replacement	Yes	File a support ticket; completed within SLA

Frequently asked questions

Does Restate have access to my AWS or Azure credentials?

No. Restate never receives your cloud provider credentials. The deployment agent operates using an IAM role on AWS or a managed identity on Azure within your account that you provision. Restate’s control plane authenticates to your Kubernetes cluster using bearer tokens with limited RBAC permissions.

Can I run BYOC in an air gapped environment?

Not with the standard deployment model. The deployment agent requires outbound internet access to poll for jobs, and Restate’s control plane requires access to your Kubernetes API. For environments with strict egress requirements, contact Restate to discuss private connectivity options such as AWS PrivateLink or Azure Private Link.

What happens if I revoke Restate's access?

Your Restate environments continue running because they are self contained workloads. However, you lose the ability to create, update, delete, or scale environments through the Restate Cloud console. You can restore management by granting access again.

How do you prevent lateral movement if the control plane is compromised?

Multiple layers of defense limit access:

1. Kubernetes RBAC limits the control plane to RestateCluster CRD operations and namespace scoped resources.
2. Network policies prevent pods from communicating outside their namespace.
3. Nodes do not expose SSH access. All management uses the Kubernetes API.
4. Pod security contexts enforce non root execution and read only filesystems.
5. You retain audit logs of all operations.

How are secrets managed?

Signing keys for request authentication are generated in the cluster and stored as Kubernetes Secrets within the environment’s namespace. They never leave your cluster. For your own application secrets, use your existing secrets management solution, such as AWS Secrets Manager, Azure Key Vault, or HashiCorp Vault.

What data does Restate collect from my environments?

Restate collects only the operational metadata required for management, including pod health, resource utilization, non sensitive environment configuration, and cluster metrics used for monitoring and alerting.

Restate does not collect application payloads, invocation data, stored state, customer secrets, or application logs.

Can I use my own container registry?

Yes. You can mirror Restate images to your private registry and configure the deployment to pull from there. This lets you use your existing vulnerability scanning and policy enforcement tooling.

Do you have SOC 2 certification?

Restate is SOC 2 Type I certified, with a Type II audit underway.