> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.neuraltrust.ai/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# How it works

> The five stages of the TrustLens lifecycle — connect, discover, assess, monitor, and alert — and how data flows from your environment into a single AI inventory.

TrustLens runs the same five-stage loop against every connected environment. Each stage uses **read-only credentials** scoped to the integration and produces structured records that feed into the unified inventory.

## The lifecycle

<Steps>
  <Step title="Connect">
    You register an Integration once per environment using the credentials each provider expects:

    * **Cloud platforms** (Azure, GCP) — service principal or service account with read-only RBAC roles
    * **SaaS providers** (Mistral) — read-only API key
    * **Microsoft 365** — Azure AD service principal + Dataverse Application User
    * **Source code** (GitHub) — GitHub App installation with `contents:read` only
    * **Managed endpoints** (Intune, Kandji) — signed Device Discovery script with a per-integration write-only token

    Credentials are encrypted at rest. No integration ever needs write access to your environment.
  </Step>

  <Step title="Discover">
    The connector enumerates every AI-related resource the credential can see:

    * Agents, models, datasets, vector stores, document libraries
    * Tools, instructions, knowledge bases bound to each agent
    * Guardrail policies (RAI filters, Model Armor templates, Mistral moderation policies)
    * Source files implementing agents and MCP servers
    * Installed AI software, browser extensions, and MCP configs on managed devices

    Discovery is non-destructive — the connector lists and reads, never writes. Each discovered item becomes a typed entry in the inventory (`Agent`, `Model`, `MCPServer`, `EndpointHost`, etc.).
  </Step>

  <Step title="Assess">
    Each discovered resource is scored against the security controls relevant to its type:

    * **Authentication** — is the resource reachable without auth? Anonymous? Restricted to a group?
    * **Guardrails** — are content filters or moderation policies attached?
    * **Tool exposure** — what tools can the agent invoke? Are any high-risk (script execution, identity management)?
    * **Instructions** — does the agent have a system prompt that constrains behavior?
    * **Data sources** — what knowledge bases or files can it read?
    * **Configuration drift** — has any of the above changed since the last sync?

    Each finding is tagged with severity (Critical / High / Medium / Low) and aggregated into a per-resource posture score. See [Risk & findings](/trustlens/risk-and-findings) for the full taxonomy.
  </Step>

  <Step title="Monitor">
    Where the upstream platform exposes telemetry, the connector pulls usage signals to track adoption and flag anomalies:

    | Source                               | Signals                                                      |
    | ------------------------------------ | ------------------------------------------------------------ |
    | Application Insights (Azure v2)      | Runs, tokens, latency, errors, tool-call breakdown           |
    | Azure Monitor (Azure AI Hub)         | `AgentRuns`, `AgentTokens`, `AgentThreads`, `AgentToolCalls` |
    | Cloud Monitoring + Cloud Trace (GCP) | Request count, latency, CPU/memory, tool-call spans          |
    | Mistral Conversations API            | Per-agent runs, conversations, tool-call counts              |
    | Dataverse transcripts (M365)         | Per-bot conversation count                                   |
    | Endpoint Discovery script            | Inventory delta per device per run                           |

    No prompt or response content ever leaves your environment. Telemetry is metadata only.
  </Step>

  <Step title="Alert">
    Findings are surfaced three ways:

    * **Dashboards** — Posture Risk Trend, Risk Distribution, Attack Surface by Type
    * **Insights panel** — actionable summaries (e.g. *"6 high-risk resources — Investigate"*)
    * **Notifications** — high-severity findings can be forwarded to the SIEMs configured under [Telemetry → Integrations](/platform/alert-integrations) (Splunk, Elastic, IBM QRadar, Microsoft Sentinel, Datadog)

    Resync runs on a configurable schedule (default daily) so the inventory always reflects the current state of your environment.
  </Step>
</Steps>

***

## Data flow

```
┌──────────────────────┐    read-only     ┌─────────────────────────┐
│  Your environments   │ ───────────────▶ │  TrustLens │
│  (Azure, GCP, M365,  │                  │  control plane          │
│   Mistral, GitHub,   │                  │                         │
│   managed devices)   │ ◀─────────────── │  - Inventory            │
└──────────────────────┘   no writes      │  - Posture scoring      │
                                          │  - Findings             │
                                          │  - Telemetry aggregates │
                                          └───────────┬─────────────┘
                                                      │
                                                      │ optional forward
                                                      ▼
                                          ┌─────────────────────────┐
                                          │  SIEM / ticketing       │
                                          │  (Splunk, Sentinel, …)  │
                                          └─────────────────────────┘
```

* **Inbound from your environment**: structured metadata only (resource names, configs, telemetry counters).
* **Outbound to your environment**: nothing. There is no return channel that mutates your resources.
* **Outbound from the platform**: SIEM forwarding for high-severity findings, if configured.

## Sync cadence

| Integration              | Default cadence                                | Tunable                                      |
| ------------------------ | ---------------------------------------------- | -------------------------------------------- |
| Azure                    | Every 6 hours                                  | Yes                                          |
| GCP Vertex AI            | Every 6 hours                                  | Yes                                          |
| Mistral AI               | Every 6 hours                                  | Yes                                          |
| M365 Copilot             | Every 12 hours                                 | Yes                                          |
| GitHub                   | On-demand + every 24 hours                     | Incremental: skipped when HEAD SHA unchanged |
| Endpoint Discovery (MDM) | Driven by MDM script schedule (typical: daily) | Yes — change the MDM script frequency        |

You can trigger a manual resync from each integration's settings page at any time.

## Read-only by construction

Every integration in TrustLens is built around the principle that **no credential should be able to change anything in your environment**:

* Cloud roles are scoped to `*.viewer` / `*.read` equivalents
* Mistral and Microsoft Graph API permissions are read-only application permissions
* The GitHub App requests `contents:read` and `metadata:read` — nothing else
* The Endpoint Discovery script enumerates the local filesystem and exits; the per-integration token can only write to that integration's inventory
* All credentials are encrypted at rest and never echoed back through the API

If a sync fails because of insufficient permission, the integration fails closed (no data) rather than gracefully skipping the affected resource silently — see each integration's troubleshooting section for the specific symptoms.