🛡️ Tier-3 hybrid architecture

Credentials in your VPC.
Outbound HTTPS only.

A lightweight Python agent runs inside your network. Connector credentials (AD passwords, API tokens, OAuth secrets) are encrypted at rest with a machine-bound key and never transmitted to our control plane. No inbound ports, no VPN tunnel, no firewall exceptions. One-line installer.

How it works

Two-layer architecture. Sharp data boundary.

The control plane handles task scheduling, configuration, dashboards, and aggregated reporting. The agent handles connector execution, raw identity data, and local secret resolution. Connector credentials never leave your network — by architecture, not policy.

🌐 Control plane (our EU cloud)

  • Task scheduling + queue
  • Tenant config, dashboards, audit chain
  • Connector metadata (engine type, vendor template)
  • Aggregated identity/grant data (post-sync, no secrets)
↓ tasks ↓
↑ results ↑

🏢 Agent (your VPC)

  • Local agent-vault.json — encrypted credentials
  • Connector execution against your AD / LDAP / REST targets
  • Identity data ingested + filtered before upload
  • HMAC-signed self-update with automatic rollback

Result: you get the operational simplicity of SaaS with a sharp, enforceable data boundary. Auditors can verify that connector secrets never crossed it by reading 200 lines of agent source code.

Side-by-side security comparison

Agent vs SSL VPN — when classic IGA reaches into your AD.

Classic IGA platforms (SailPoint, Saviynt, Omada) typically deploy a virtual appliance behind a customer-managed VPN to reach AD. The VPN gets you connectivity — but it also gets you a wide-open IP tunnel between the vendor's SaaS and your internal network. Here's how the tier-3 agent compares on every security dimension that comes up in customer reviews.

Dimension Classic SSL VPN deployment RapidValue tier-3 agent
Where connector credentials live Vendor's SaaS
Stored in the vendor's vault. Encrypted in transit + at rest on their side. Your customer security review must trust their key management, their backup process, and their breach response.
Your machine
Stored in agent-vault.json on the agent host. Encrypted with a machine-bound master key (env var, local file, or external secret store like Azure Key Vault / HashiCorp Vault). Never transmitted to the control plane.
Network ingress Inbound permitted
SSL VPN tunnel terminates inside your network. By design, the vendor's appliance can initiate connections to anything reachable from that VPN endpoint — broad blast radius.
No inbound
Agent connects outbound on port 443 to *.rapidvalue.eu. No listening ports on the agent host. Your firewall sees one well-known TLS destination. Nothing else.
Data classification reaching the SaaS Raw, unfiltered
VPN sees AD bind events, raw user attributes, password operations. Vendor's SaaS holds full identity data including sensitive fields (employee numbers, badge IDs, sometimes salaries).
Filtered + aggregated
Agent reads raw data, applies the configured field mapping before upload. Sensitive fields can be hashed, dropped, or kept entirely on-side (read-only governance use case).
SSRF / arbitrary-target risk Open by default
VPN tunnel doesn't limit what the SaaS-side can ask. A compromised control plane can reach any internal service from the VPN endpoint — DBs, secret stores, internal admin panels.
URL allowlist
Every tunnelled HTTP request from the control plane carries allowed_base_url = the configured connector base URL. Agent refuses any URL that doesn't match. Closed by default, not "lock down after the fact".
Authentication of control plane → endpoint VPN-level
Authentication happens once (VPN handshake). After that, the tunnel is fully trusted. No per-request signing or replay protection.
Per-session signed
Agent authenticates via ECDSA P-256 keypair + challenge-response. Short-lived 4-hour JWT access tokens. Nonces are one-time, verified against agent's registered public key. Optional mTLS layered on top.
Audit trail of vendor-side actions In the vendor's hands
VPN connection logs are at the vendor; any unusual action takes a ticket + their breach-response process to surface. Often discovered months after the fact.
Local + immutable
Every connector call is logged on the agent host and reported back to the audit chain (HMAC-signed, PostgreSQL-trigger-immutable). Verify from your side at any time without vendor involvement.
Self-update integrity Vendor-managed
Vendor pushes appliance updates over the tunnel. Verification depends on their build pipeline + your trust in their signing process. Limited rollback options.
HMAC-verified + auto-rollback
Each release is HMAC-SHA256 signed with a per-agent key. Agent verifies before swapping. Failed boot within 60s restores previous binary automatically. No emergency SSH required.
Blast-radius caps (write operations) None at network layer
VPN doesn't know what's a "normal" provisioning rate. A misconfigured policy or compromised SaaS can mass-modify your AD before the standard IGA safety thresholds even check.
Per-agent thresholds
Provisioning thresholds (creates / updates / deletes) configured per agent boot. Once breached, the agent refuses that operation class until you investigate. Belt-and-suspenders alongside the control-plane safety guards.
Decommissioning Formal teardown
VPN cert revocation, firewall rule cleanup, appliance VM decommissioning, vendor-side tenant deletion. Multi-week process for a 2-week POC that didn't convert.
One command
systemctl stop rv-agent (or kill the Docker container). Agent stops accepting tasks; vault file can be deleted; firewall rules and accounts go untouched. Walk-away clean.
🔒

The vendor-credentials guarantee — in writing

Connector credentials handled by the tier-3 agent stay inside your network for the entire connector lifecycle. The control plane never receives them, never logs them, never backs them up. Our standard MSA encodes this as a binding architectural commitment, not a policy you have to trust. Read the agent source (≈ 1200 lines of Python) and verify yourself.

Why this matters in EU sales cycles

Security review compressed from weeks to minutes.

⏱️ Customer security teams move faster

A security review for the tier-3 agent is bounded: read 1200 lines of agent source, verify the outbound-only TLS, confirm the credential-storage path. Same-afternoon sign-off is realistic. SSL VPN reviews routinely take 4-8 weeks because they involve network architects + vendor trust documentation.

🇪🇺 EU sovereignty out of the box

For German Mittelstand, French ETI, Dutch publieke sector — "we don't send credentials to your cloud" is the kind of statement that closes deals. Tier-3 hybrid is the technical spec underneath that statement, and the agent source is the proof.

🇪🇺 No US Cloud Act exposure

The control plane runs on EU-domiciled infrastructure (AWS eu-west-1 standard, OVH or Scaleway on request). Connector credentials never reach it. So even if a Cloud Act order targeted our SaaS, your AD passwords aren't there to hand over.

📦 Walk-away clean

POC didn't convert? Kill the agent process. No formal decommissioning, no certificate cleanup, no IAM role review. Everything that lived in your network leaves with one systemctl stop.

Deployment

Same agent, four deployment modes.

Standard ☁️

SaaS + agent

Our EU cloud (eu-west-1) + agent in your VPC

Operational simplicity of SaaS. Connector credentials inside your network. Standard configuration for 80%+ of customers.

~5 min install

EU Sovereign 🇪🇺

EU Sovereign SaaS

OVH or Scaleway control plane

EU-domiciled infrastructure, no US Cloud Act exposure. Agent unchanged. Standard for public-sector + defence-adjacent verticals.

On request · same SLA

Private cloud 🏛️

Your AWS / Azure / OVH

Control plane in your cloud account

Deployed via Terraform in your environment. Your IAM, your VPC, your backups. Agent is optional — you can run all in-cloud.

Helm + Terraform modules

On-prem 🔌

On-premises

Docker Compose or Kubernetes

Air-gapped supported. Update channels via your internal mirror. Standard for tier-0 critical infrastructure customers.

Annual support contract

See the agent install in 5 minutes.

One-line installer in your VPC. Standard outbound-only firewall rule. We'll show you the source, the vault, and the audit chain — same call.

Book a POC demo →
EU-hosted · No installation footprint · Walks away cleanly if you don't convert