Quillmark Health / BG-Demo – Security Review
Callcompleted
Quillmark Health · 15 Jun 2026 15:00
Second of three Enterprise security review sessions with Quillmark Health on 15 Jun 2026. Megan Alvarez set seven findings, closed none, and made model processing and connector access enforcement the main open items.
What was said
What this says
As at Fri 9 Oct 2026Second of three Enterprise security review sessions with Quillmark Health on 15 Jun 2026. Megan Alvarez set seven findings, closed none, and made model processing and connector access enforcement the main open items.
What happened: Hannah Lowe hosted session two on 15 Jun 2026. Megan Alvarez worked through seven findings and closed none.
Customer view: Her priorities were connector-by-connector enforcement of access restrictions and whether protected content leaves the account for model processing. She called the latter a material open item.
Commercial: Megan said the £155k proposal does not influence the review. Hannah repeated that the 30 Jun 2026 close is a planning date that moves if the answers are not right.
Watch: Calls and email are treated as out of scope until enforcement is shown, which narrows the design. Helpdesk ticket bodies are likely out for a first phase, which Hannah admitted reduces usefulness somewhat.
Themes
As at Fri 9 Oct 2026Theme
Enterprise security review, session two
Importance
neutral
Sentiment
mixed
Voice
decision-maker
Who was there
BG-Demo
CRMmade from
Them
CRMmade from
Follow-up
Next steps
As at Fri 9 Oct 2026- Hannah Lowe to send a status note by the end of that week saying what is coming and when.
- Hannah Lowe to send the boundary statement, two diagrams and the connector table labelled enforced, not enforced or enforced by exclusion.
- Megan Alvarez to send the notification clause, the region confirmation and the client-services questions.
Risks
As at Fri 9 Oct 2026- The model processing flow for a US healthcare deployment is unconfirmed, and Megan said protected content leaving the account would change the review.
- Hannah could not confirm the incident notification clause, so contract wording could block the deal.
- All seven findings remain open and the third session will only be held after written responses are read.
Opportunities
As at Fri 9 Oct 2026- A narrower design with calls, email and free-text fields excluded by default fits Megan's conservative posture and can be widened later.
- Real questions from the client-services leads would let Hannah show what a restricted design can answer.
- The dedicated US residency add-on and Enterprise SSO with automated provisioning answer the residency and group-assignment concerns.
Transcript
Hannah LoweHello Megan, can you hear me all right? I've got you on screen but I'm not sure the audio's come through on my side yet.
Megan AlvarezI can hear you. Good to see you again, Hannah. Give me one second, I'm closing a couple of things so I'm not distracted.- Hannah LoweNo rush. It's a grey Monday afternoon here, so I'm quite happy to sit and wait. How's Boston?
- Megan AlvarezBright and far too warm for this early in the day. Okay, I'm here. Shall we begin?
- Hannah LowePlease. Before we start, what do you most need to know from me today? I have the findings list from last time, but I'd rather work to your priorities than mine.
- Megan AlvarezUnderstood. For the record, this is the second of three sessions in our vendor review. I'll restate scope, then the open findings, and then I'd like to take them in order. Is that acceptable?
- Hannah LoweYes, that works. I'll take notes against each number so nothing gets lost.
- Megan AlvarezScope first. We are evaluating the Enterprise tier to give our client-services teams a single view of each hospital client. That means protected health information could be reachable through the system, either directly or through connected sources. Our risk posture on that is conservative. The review covers architecture, access control, data handling, incident history and exit. Finding one is where the data physically sits and who can reach it.
- Hannah LoweRight. So, to be precise, the short answer is that the brain is built and run inside your own Snowflake account. The longer answer is that this changes what we hold. We don't copy your data into a BG-Demo environment and query it from there. The tables, the indexes and the question history all live in your account, under your account's controls.
- Megan AlvarezThen what does BG-Demo hold? Please be specific. I need to know what is on your side of the line.
- Hannah LoweFair. We hold the software we deploy, our own support records, and whatever you choose to send us in a ticket. For a normal build, we don't hold your records. I'll put that in writing, with a diagram that shows the boundary, because it's easier to review as a picture than as a paragraph.
- Megan AlvarezA diagram is fine, but I'll need the written statement to say it explicitly. A diagram alone doesn't go into the review file.
- Hannah LoweUnderstood. The statement and the diagram will go together, and the statement will be the controlling document.
- Megan AlvarezGood. Related to that, residency. All of our hospital clients' data must remain in the United States. Where does that stand?
- Hannah LoweThere's a dedicated US residency option, and it's one of the add-ons on the order form. Because the deployment sits in your Snowflake account, the region is the region of that account. So if your account is in a US region, the data stays there. I'd want to confirm the region with your platform team rather than assume it.
- Megan AlvarezOur platform team will confirm. I'll have them send the region in writing. Finding one, then: boundary statement and diagram from you, region confirmation from us. Correct?
- Hannah LoweCorrect. Mm, one more thing on that, if I may. The connectors read from your source systems, so what the brain can see depends on what each connector is allowed to read. That's where most of the real risk sits, not in the storage.
- Megan AlvarezYes. That is finding two. Access control. Specifically, how do you prevent a client-services analyst from asking a question and receiving an answer drawn from a hospital client they are not assigned to?
- Hannah LoweGood, this is the one I want to be careful with. Let me give you a concrete example. Say an analyst is assigned to one hospital group. In the source system, that analyst can only open records for that group. The brain should inherit that restriction, so a question gets answers only from material the person could already open. We configure that per connector, and on Enterprise you also have single sign-on and automated user provisioning, so the group membership comes from your identity provider rather than from us.
- Megan AlvarezShould inherit. Is it enforced, or is it a setting someone has to remember to set?
- Hannah LoweThat's a fair challenge. It's something we configure and test during implementation, and it isn't something I'd call automatic for every source. Some sources expose permissions cleanly and some don't. For the ones that don't, we would restrict what's indexed instead of relying on a filter at question time. I don't want to overstate it, so I'll list, connector by connector, which behaviour you'd get.
- Megan AlvarezPlease do. And for the record, I will not accept best effort on this. If a connector cannot enforce the restriction, I need it written as not enforced.
- Hannah LoweAgreed. Enforced, not enforced, or enforced by exclusion. Those are the three labels I'll use, and nothing in between.
- Megan AlvarezGood. Next question, and I'd like to be thorough on this one. Who at BG-Demo can access the deployment, and how is that access granted, logged and removed?
- Hannah LoweSo, in the build phase, a small number of our engineers need access to your account to deploy and configure. That access comes from you. You create the role, you grant it, and you can revoke it. We don't have standing access of our own.
- Megan AlvarezAnd the logging? If I need to see who touched what in March, can I?
- Hannah LoweThe activity happens in your Snowflake account, so it appears in your own access history, which you already control and retain according to your own policy. I would say that's the strongest part of the design, honestly. I'd rather you hold the evidence than rely on mine.
- Megan AlvarezI'll note that. I'll want the process for access removal when an engineer leaves your company, though. Not just your customers' revoking.
- Hannah LoweThat's reasonable, and it's a gap in what I sent last time. I'll ask the colleague who owns our internal access policy for the leaver steps rather than paraphrase them from memory. I don't want to give you an answer I haven't checked.
- Megan AlvarezI appreciate that. Finding three. Please describe any incidents in the last ninety days that affected, or could have affected, customer data or service availability.
- Hannah LoweYes. I know this matters to you, and I know you'd rather hear it from us than find it yourselves. I don't want to answer that from memory on a call, because it's the kind of statement that needs to be exact. I'll put that in writing, signed off internally, covering availability events and anything touching customer data, for the window you've defined.
- Megan AlvarezWill it also cover near misses? Events that did not result in impact but were reportable internally?
- Hannah LoweI'll ask for that to be included, and if it can't be, I'll tell you plainly that it isn't and why. I won't leave it ambiguous.
- Megan AlvarezThat is acceptable. The written response should arrive before the third session. I'd like to read it ahead of time, not during.
- Hannah LoweUnderstood. It will be with you well before then.
- Megan AlvarezLet me move to finding four, which relates to service levels. Our contract language would require that a security-relevant incident is communicated to us within a defined period. What does your support model commit to, as opposed to what you intend?
- Hannah LoweYes. On Enterprise, the first response to a priority-one issue is half an hour, and availability is a contracted level with service credits. That's a commitment in the order form, not an intention. What I'd separate out is incident notification. That's a different clause, and I don't think our standard paper gives you the wording you've described. So the answer there is that I'd want our contracts side to look at your language before I say yes.
- Megan AlvarezSo you cannot confirm it today.
- Hannah LoweNo, I can't, and I'd rather say so than agree and have it come back to haunt us both. If you send me the clause as your counsel has drafted it, I'll route it and come back to you in writing.
- Megan AlvarezI'll send it today. Finding five, which is exit. When the relationship ends, what happens to everything the brain has created in our account?
- Hannah LoweBecause it's all in your account, you hold it, so the question becomes what we remove and what you remove. We take our deployed components out. The derived tables and indexes are yours, and you can drop them or keep them. What we can't do is delete things in your account without you asking us, which I'd say is the right behaviour here.
- Megan AlvarezAnd anything BG-Demo holds from support tickets, or from the implementation period?
- Hannah LoweThat's the part I need to check, retention on our support records in particular. I don't have the exact period in my head, and I won't guess. It will go into the same written response.
- Megan AlvarezNoted. I also need to ask about sub-processors. Does BG-Demo rely on any third parties that could process our data?
- Hannah LoweFor the deployed brain, the data is processed within your Snowflake account, so the platform provider is the one you already have a relationship with. For our own tooling, such as how we handle tickets, there are some suppliers. I'll provide that list in the written response with what each one is used for and whether customer data could ever reach it.
- Megan AlvarezPlease include whether the answer is could or does. Those are not the same thing.
- Hannah LoweNo, they're not. I'll state each one separately.
- Megan AlvarezThank you. One more topic. The model component. When a user asks a question, where does that processing occur, and is any content retained by anyone other than us?
- Hannah LoweTo be precise, I want to answer that one properly, so let me describe the flow and then flag what I'd verify. The question and the retrieved passages are assembled inside your environment. The question history is stored in your account. Whether anything leaves for model processing, and under what terms, depends on how the deployment is configured. I'd like to confirm the exact configuration for a US healthcare deployment before I say anything stronger.
- Megan AlvarezThat is a material open item. If any protected content leaves our account boundary, that changes the review.
- Hannah LoweUnderstood, and I'd treat it as such. I'll make it its own section in the response so it can't be lost among the smaller items.
- Megan AlvarezGood. Let me summarise what I have so we agree. Number one, boundary statement and diagram from you, region confirmation from us. Number two, connector-by-connector enforcement, labelled as enforced, not enforced, or enforced by exclusion. Number three, the incident statement for the last ninety days, including near misses where possible. Number four, notification clause routed to your contracts side once I send it. Number five, exit and retention, plus sub-processors, could versus does. Number six, the model processing flow. Have I missed anything?
- Hannah LoweYou've also asked for the leaver process for our engineers' access. That's the one I said I'd check with a colleague.
- Megan AlvarezCorrect. Seven. Thank you.
- Hannah LoweMm. Can I ask something from my side? It might help me prioritise. Is there a form you'd prefer the answers in? A questionnaire format, or a plain narrative?
- Megan AlvarezNumbered responses that map to my numbering, in plain narrative. Please do not send marketing material in place of an answer. I will read it, but it will not be treated as evidence.
- Hannah LoweUnderstood. Numbered, plain, mapped to yours.
- Megan AlvarezI also want to mention the commercial side for the record, so there's no misunderstanding. Procurement has the proposal at one hundred fifty-five thousand pounds in total, with implementation included. That figure does not influence this review. If anything it creates pressure on timing, and I'll resist that.
- Hannah LoweI'd expect you to, and I'd prefer you did. There's an expected close at the end of June, on 30 Jun 2026, but that's a planning date on our side, not a deadline I want to put on your review. If the answers aren't right, the date moves.
- Megan AlvarezThank you. I'll be direct: I cannot indicate the outcome today, and I will not give any verbal view on whether you will pass. The board risk committee receives my written recommendation, and that comes after the third session.
- Hannah LoweThat's completely fine. I wasn't going to ask, and I'd be wary if you did say.
- Megan AlvarezThen let's use the remaining time on the connector detail, since that's finding two and it's the largest. Which sources would be in scope for our client-services teams, from your side of the proposal?
- Hannah LoweFrom the proposal, the main ones are the CRM, the helpdesk, the accounting system and the shared document store, plus calls and email if you decide to include them. Calls and email are the ones I'd be most careful about, because the content is least structured, and permissions are hardest to carry across.
- Megan AlvarezThen I would suggest we assume, for the review, that calls and email are out of scope until you can demonstrate enforcement. Is that workable?
- Hannah LoweIt's workable and it's sensible. I'd rather show you a narrower design that holds than a wide one with caveats. I'll mark those two as excluded in the response, and we can revisit them later if your team wants.
- Megan AlvarezGood. For the CRM, what would be indexed? Whole records, or selected fields?
- Hannah LoweSelected fields, by design. We'd agree a field list with you, and anything not on the list isn't read. For a healthcare setting, I'd start from nothing and add, rather than start from everything and remove. If a free-text notes field might contain patient detail, it stays off unless you tell us otherwise.
- Megan AlvarezFree-text notes are exactly where our people paste things they shouldn't. I'd want those excluded by default and documented as such.
- Hannah LoweYes. Excluded by default, documented, and changed only with your written agreement. I'll write it that way.
- Megan AlvarezNext, the helpdesk. Same question.
- Hannah LoweSimilar approach, but tickets are free text almost by definition, so I'd be even more cautious. It might be that the useful part is the metadata: category, status, timing, which client. The body of a ticket is the risky part. We'd decide with you whether bodies are in or out, and I'd lean towards out for a first phase.
- Megan AlvarezIs that a limitation for your product? Does it reduce its usefulness for us?
- Hannah LoweSomewhat, honestly. You'd get answers about patterns and counts and timelines, and less about the narrative inside each ticket. For a lot of client-services questions, which client is waiting longest, which issue keeps recurring, that's enough. It's your decision which side of that trade you want, and I'd rather you chose it knowing the cost.
- Megan AlvarezHm. That's candid. I'll take it to the client-services leads and see which questions they actually need answered.
- Hannah LoweThat would help me enormously, actually. If you can send me even five or six of the real questions, I can show you what a restricted design would and wouldn't answer.
- Megan AlvarezI'll ask. No promises on the timing. They are busy.
- Hannah LoweOf course. Whatever you can get.
- Megan AlvarezLet me return to something you said earlier, about the identity provider. Our group assignments by hospital client change often. What happens when an analyst is moved between clients on a Friday and asks a question on Monday?
- Hannah LoweThe short answer is that the change should follow as soon as your identity provider pushes it. The longer answer is that there are two timings to understand: when the group membership changes, and when the brain's view of that membership refreshes. The nightly refresh completes by seven in the morning on business days, so I'd want to confirm whether membership is evaluated at question time or taken from the last refresh. I believe it's the former for the identity side, but I won't say so until I've checked.
- Megan AlvarezPlease add that to the connector section. Specifically the maximum time a revoked permission could remain effective.
- Hannah LoweYes. A maximum, stated, rather than a typical.
- Megan AlvarezPrecisely. Now, the review of your own staff. Do your engineers who touch customer environments receive any training specific to regulated health data?
- Hannah LoweI can speak for myself and the people I work with that we're careful and we've worked with regulated customers, but you're asking for something more formal than my experience, and I don't want to answer a policy question with an anecdote. I'll include it in the same request to my colleague, with the leaver process.
- Megan AlvarezFine. I would rather an honest anecdote not be the basis of the record anyway.
- Hannah LoweAgreed.
- Megan AlvarezRegarding the third session. I want to hold it after I've received and read your written responses, and after my team has finished its own checks. That may be some days, perhaps longer.
- Hannah LoweThat's fine. I'd suggest we don't fix the date until you've had the responses, so we aren't booking a call on the strength of documents that aren't ready.
- Megan AlvarezAgreed. I'd also ask that any change to what you've told us, between now and then, is sent proactively. If you discover something is not as described, I expect to hear from you before I find it.
- Hannah LoweYou will. That's not something I'd leave to chance. If something changes, you'll hear it from me first.
- Megan AlvarezThank you. That's important to me, more than the individual answers.
- Hannah LoweI understand. Can I check one thing, just so I don't send the wrong thing? On the diagram, would you like a single view or one per connector class?
- Megan AlvarezOne overall boundary view, and one for the access path from a user's question to the data. Two diagrams. Please keep them plain.
- Hannah LoweTwo diagrams, plain. Boundary and access path.
- Megan AlvarezI think we have covered what I planned for today. Is there anything on your side you need from me?
- Hannah LoweThree things, really. The notification clause from your counsel, the region confirmation from your platform team, and, if you can, those few real questions from the client-services leads. Everything else I can do from here.
- Megan AlvarezUnderstood. The clause today. The region from the platform team when they respond. The questions, as soon as I can persuade someone to write them down.
- Hannah LoweThat's all I can ask. And on my side: the boundary statement and two diagrams, the connector table with the three labels, the incident statement, the sub-processor list, retention and exit, the model processing flow, and the leaver and training answers. All numbered to match yours.
- Megan AlvarezThat's the list. When can I expect it?
- Hannah LoweSome of it, the statement and diagrams and connector table, within a few days. The incident statement, the sub-processors and the model flow need checking with colleagues, so I'd rather give you a full set once, correctly, than a partial set quickly. I'll send you a note by the end of this week telling you exactly what is coming and when, and I'd aim to have the full set well ahead of the end of June.
- Megan AlvarezA status note by Friday is acceptable. Please keep it factual. If something is late, say that it is late and why.
- Hannah LoweI will.
- Megan AlvarezOne last point, for the record. This call has not changed anything about the review's status. All seven items remain open until I have the written responses.
- Hannah LoweUnderstood. Seven open, nothing closed today. I'll write the note on that basis.
- Megan AlvarezThank you, Hannah. I appreciate that you didn't try to answer everything from memory.
- Hannah LoweWell, I'd rather be slow and right. Thanks for the structure, it makes it much easier to answer properly.
- Megan AlvarezThen we're done for today. I'll send the clause shortly. Goodbye for now.
- Hannah LoweGoodbye, Megan. Speak soon. Thanks, Hannah.
Callsmade from