Data Residency for Azure Bot Service

Question

I am building a Teams bot for an Australian company. I need to ensure that the data will remain inside Australia. When selecting the regions I see that some data has to pass through either Europe or India. What sort of data is transiting ? Does it mean that the content of every message and action is routed through those regions or only some metadata. For context, the server hosting my bot will be in Australia.

Thank you

Answer 1

Hi Pierre de Schaetzen,

Welcome to Microsoft Q&A forum. Thank you for posting your query.

Understanding Data Residency in Azure Bot Service

When deploying a Teams bot for an Australian company, ensuring data residency within Australia is a critical requirement, especially for compliance with regulations like the Australian Privacy Act (1988) and APRA CPS 234.

Azure Bot Service interacts with Microsoft Teams and other channels, which may involve data transits outside the selected region. The key concerns here are:

1. Where is the bot's core processing happening?

Since your bot is hosted in Australia, it will process and respond to messages within Azure’s Australia region.

2. Where does Microsoft route Teams-related data?

When selecting Australia as the bot’s hosting region, most bot data remains in Australia.

However, some Microsoft services, such as Bot Framework Service (BFS) and LUIS/Azure OpenAI, may transit data through other regions (Europe or India) for specific functionalities.

The data transit depends on the services used within Azure Bot Service, including telemetry, natural language processing, and user analytics.

3. What Data is Transiting to Other Regions?
4. If you see a notification that some data may transit through Europe or India, it typically means the following types of data might be affected:

Data Type	Is It Transited Outside Australia?
Bot
Messages (User Queries & Responses)	No, if
hosted in Australia
Bot Messages (User Queries & Responses)	No, if hosted in Australia
Bot Metadata (Telemetry, Logs, API Call Records)	Yes, some telemetry may be routed outside
AI Services (LUIS, Azure OpenAI, Speech Services)	Yes, if the AI service is not hosted in Australia
Teams Routing Metadata (Service-Level Communication)	Yes, some Teams services use global routing

If AI services like LUIS, Azure OpenAI, or Speech Services are not available in Australia, requests may be processed in another region.

Some bot telemetry (logs, analytics, monitoring data) may also be processed globally unless explicitly configured.

Solution to Keep Data Within Australia

To fully ensure all bot-related data remains inside Australia, follow these best practices:

1. Choose Australia for Hosting (Azure Bot Service + App Service)

• Deploy your bot’s backend in Azure Australia East or Australia Southeast.
• Store bot-related data in an Australia-based Azure SQL Database, CosmosDB, or Blob Storage.

2. Configure Bot Service and Azure AI Services to Stay in Australia

• If using Azure OpenAI, deploy models in Australia East.
• If using LUIS (Language Understanding), migrate to Custom Text Classification (available in Australia).
• Ensure all Azure Cognitive Services (e.g., Speech, Translator) are explicitly provisioned in Australia.

3. Restrict Telemetry & Logs to Australia

• Use Application Insights in Australia East and configure it to retain logs locally.
• Disable global telemetry in the Azure Bot Service settings (or configure retention policies).

4. Compliance Check with Microsoft 365 and Teams Data

• Microsoft Teams ensures that chat data for Australian users is stored in Australian data centers.
• However, some service metadata might still transit through global Microsoft Teams services.
• Ensure compliance with Microsoft 365 data residency policies for Teams in Australia.

 Hope this helps. Do let us know if you any further queries.   

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