Retrieval - Governance
Summary
B to E: Retrieval coverage reports, ungoverned AI access paths, and corpus risk profiles provided to Enterprise AI Governance for inclusion in the AI risk register and use case decisions.
E to B: Governance directives on which corpora may be used for which AI use cases, jurisdictions, and tenants, typically expressed via Pillar A policy or GRC workflows that then drive changes in Pillar B configuration.
Standards and Specifications
- EU AI Act
- NIST AI RMF
This interface turns retrieval design choices—what corpora are reachable by AI for which users and use cases—into explicit governance artifacts that E-AIG can understand, approve, and monitor. Pillar B must summarize which data sources are exposed via AI, how they are partitioned, and where gaps exist such as shadow indexes or uncontrolled vector stores, so governance can assess risk against regulatory and internal requirements. In return, E-AIG defines which datasets are in or out of scope for specific AI use cases, what geo and tenant boundaries must be enforced, and what retrieval patterns are categorically prohibited, usually by updating policies and control objectives that Pillar A and Pillar D then implement and monitor. When implemented, the B-E interface ensures that retrieval is not simply a technical configuration but a governed surface aligned with organizational risk appetite and regulatory constraints, with E→B influence flowing primarily through shared policy and governance workflows.
Variants
Retrieval coverage and exposure reports
Pillar B periodically produces reports that list all corpora, tenants, and data domains configured for AI retrieval, including their classification levels and associated AI use cases, and delivers them to governance for review.
Requires consistent tagging and metadata across indexes, vector stores, and connectors so that reports present an accurate, comparable picture of exposure; governance tools must be able to ingest or reference these reports as structured data, not just documents.
Ungoverned path and shadow index detection
Retrieval teams identify and report access paths where AI can reach data that has not been formally approved by governance, such as experimental indexes, developer-owned stores, or misconfigured connectors.
Benefits from integration with discovery or DSPM tools to detect shadow data; requires a shared process whereby E-AIG can either bring such paths under governance or mandate their shutdown.
Use case-bound corpus whitelists and blacklists
E-AIG defines which corpora and data domains each AI use case may or may not draw from, and Pillar B implements these decisions as allow/deny lists in retrieval configuration and connection policies, typically via changes to Pillar A-governed entitlements or access rules.
Relies on stable corpus identifiers and use case taxonomies so that governance decisions can be applied consistently across environments; retrieval systems must support configuration that ties corpora to specific AI applications or agent profiles.
Geo, tenant, and regulatory boundary enforcement
Governance sets requirements for data residency, tenant isolation, and regulatory segmentation, and Pillar B encodes them as routing and filtering rules that prevent AI retrieval from crossing prohibited boundaries.
Depends on clear metadata about data location, tenant ownership, and regulatory tags, as well as retrieval engines that can enforce constraints at query time; misalignment between catalog tags and retrieval configuration is a frequent interoperability pitfall.
Governance attestation for retrieval configurations
Before new corpora or retrieval patterns go live, Pillar B submits configuration changes to E-AIG or a GRC workflow for approval, documenting how they satisfy governance policies and risk mitigations.
Requires integration between retrieval change processes and governance workflows, and the ability to reference specific configuration versions in governance records for later audit.
Participating Vendors
Linked Evidence
No public evidence links have been attached directly to this interface yet.
Assertions
No published assertions for this interface yet.