# Ace security: read access to investigate, your permission to act

> Ace investigates with read-only access. You choose the sources it can reach. Preparing or executing a change requires separate permissions and the policies your team sets.

## Principles

- **Read-only by default.** Investigation uses read access only. You choose which sources Ace can reach, and reading an incident never grants write access.
- **Least privilege.** Each integration has its own scoped permissions. Secret values stay out of AWS and Kubernetes evidence.
- **Approval before action.** Every change is a plan you approve in full. Automatic execution is a separate, earned policy. Every decision and result is recorded.

## What each integration can reach

- **AWS:** read-only role. Resource configuration and relationships, plus CloudWatch, X-Ray and CloudTrail data. Secret values, decryption and sensitive data-plane access are explicitly denied.
- **Kubernetes:** outbound connector, so your cluster API is never exposed. Per-cluster identity and namespace scope. Changes use a separate identity you grant.
- **GitHub:** the Ace GitHub App on the repositories you choose. Opening a pull request needs write access there. Your team merges.
- **Datadog:** metrics, logs and traces with a key you scope to read access.
- **Prometheus:** query permissions scoped to the Amazon Managed Prometheus workspace you connect.
- **Slack:** investigation updates and approval requests in channels you choose. Replies in Ace threads are redacted for secrets, card numbers, bank and phone numbers before they are stored.
- **Connectors:** Sentry, Grafana, Axiom, LiteLLM, Vercel, Trigger.dev, PostHog and PlanetScale use credentials you provide, with optional project or dataset allowlists. Webhooks are verified. Writes such as a Vercel rollback need an administrator's grant first, and PlanetScale reads use a read-only password.
- **Ace MCP server:** read-only incident context and search for coding agents. Tokens are scoped to your organization, expire after 90 days by default, are rate-limited, and every call is logged.

## Changes follow your approval policy

1. **Shadow mode first.** New organizations start in shadow mode: Ace records what it would do without doing it.
2. **Approve the exact plan.** Approval is bound to the displayed plan. A changed plan needs approval again.
3. **Production needs an approver.** Production changes need an administrator or a member an administrator has granted that action and environment. Ace mentions the approvers in Slack when someone else tries.
4. **Automatic execution is earned.** It applies to one confirmed workload and destination, after verified recoveries with no worsened outcomes. Daily caps apply and each run is announced in Slack with a cancellation countdown.
5. **A record of everything.** Decisions, policy changes, executions and recovery results are kept in an append-only audit trail.

## Data in an investigation

Resource metadata, logs, metrics, traces and the code and deployments you connect. Findings and action outcomes are kept as the investigation record. During your security review we confirm data handling and retention for your deployment.

## Compliance

- **Company:** Ace is built and operated by Vratix, Inc.
- **SOC 2 Type II:** covers Vratix, Inc., including Ace. The report is available through the trust center.
- **GDPR:** listed as compliant in the trust center.
- **Subprocessors:** Anthropic and OpenAI (AI models), AWS and Google Cloud (infrastructure), GitHub and others. Nine in total, listed in the trust center.
- **Policies:** 25 policies and 35 monitored controls at [trust.vratix.com](https://trust.vratix.com), including access control, authentication, encryption, data handling and remote access. A security questionnaire is available on request.

## Report a security concern

Email [founders@vratix.com](mailto:founders@vratix.com) with a description and steps to reproduce. Please leave credentials and customer data out of the first message, and we will coordinate sensitive details with you.