Publisher Access & Maintenance

This page explains exactly what access Corral has to your deployment, how maintenance works, and what controls you have.

Access Model

Corral does not maintain standing interactive access to your environment. There are no SSH sessions, no portal logins, no always-on connections.

All routine maintenance is performed through GitHub Actions workflows that authenticate to your tenant using a federated identity credential on the deployment’s managed identity. Every action is:

Code-driven — defined in version-controlled workflow files
Auditable — every run is a tracked workflow execution
Scoped — the federated credential is tied to a specific GitHub repository and environment

What Corral Can and Cannot Access

Corral Can (via the maintenance mechanism)

Deploy and update application containers
Update infrastructure configuration (Bicep templates)
Read deployment metadata from Key Vault
Push container images that your Container Apps pull

Corral Cannot (by architecture)

Access your SQL database interactively at runtime — no admin credentials are stored outside your Key Vault
Access your broader Azure tenant — all access is scoped to the managed resource group
Read your data through normal operations — there is no runtime data pipeline from your tenant to Corral’s infrastructure

Transparency Note

The managed identity holds Resource Group Owner on the managed resource group. This is the standard Azure Managed Application pattern — the publisher needs sufficient permissions to deploy and maintain the full set of resources. This role could theoretically be used to retrieve database connection strings and modify firewall rules within that resource group.

This is visible and auditable. Your Azure Activity Log captures every operation. Azure Policy can be configured to alert on unexpected access patterns.

Publisher Access Tiers

Azure Managed Applications support three access levels, configurable at the marketplace offer level:

Tier	How It Works	When to Use
No Access	Publisher cannot access the managed resource group	Maximum lockdown — customer handles all maintenance coordination manually
Just-in-Time (JIT)	Publisher requests access; customer approves each request with a defined time window	Recommended for production — maintenance happens with explicit approval
Full Access	Publisher has standing access via a security group	Development and early deployments — fastest iteration

For production deployments, JIT access gives you the strongest posture: Corral requests access when needed, you see exactly what’s being requested, and you approve with a time-limited window.

How Updates Work

Code Updates (Routine)

For application-only changes — new features, bug fixes, model configuration updates:

Corral builds new container images and pushes to Corral’s Azure Container Registry
A GitHub Actions workflow authenticates to your tenant
New containers are deployed to your Container Apps
No infrastructure changes, no downtime for stateless services

Infrastructure Updates (Occasional)

For changes that require new Azure resources or configuration:

Full deployment workflow runs (same as initial deployment, minus identity setup)
Bicep templates are re-applied with new resource definitions
Database migrations run as part of the deployment

Update Frequency

This section is a work in progress.

What Lives in Corral’s Tenant

A small set of non-customer-data artifacts live in Corral’s infrastructure:

Artifact	What It Is	Why
App registrations	Identity objects for SSO	Required for Entra ID integration
Container images	Application code	Pulled by your Container Apps on startup/update
Onboarding status	Deployment phase tracking	Operational metadata for monitoring provisioning
Marketplace events	Subscription lifecycle notifications	Azure Marketplace billing integration

None of these contain your data, your users’ data, or your AI’s data.

Verifying Access Yourself

You don’t need to take Corral’s word for any of this. You can verify:

Azure Activity Log — every operation against your managed resource group is logged, including any publisher access
Azure Policy — configure alerts for unexpected operations (e.g., direct database access, firewall changes)
Network monitoring — inspect traffic to and from your resources
Key Vault access logs — see every secret read