Data Model data encryption on Power BI Report Server

[nrobinson]

We are looking to deploy Power BI Reports to our Power BI Report Server with data from an Oracle database. The data is sensitive and needs to remain encrypted right up to the time the user views the reports. 

The data in oracle is encrypted and we have no issues accessing that and having it decrypted when querying it into the PB data model. We need to understand if the data is encrypted when it is sitting in the Power BI Report Server after the scheduled refresh and before it is accessed by the end user.

We are not able to find any documentation on this. Any ideas from the community?

[Jon-Heide]

PBI Report Server uses SQL Sever for it's data storage. You can either

(1) Use direct query to pull data on demand and without caching from your Oracle DB, which will be supported soon in the next release of PBI RS. 

(2) Enable transparant data encryption on the PBI Server's content database. 

[nrobinson]

Thanks. I have tested out with direct query with our dataset but it has too many limitations for it to work adequately for our situation.
Have you actually done a TDE data encryption on Power Bi report server? We knew it was possible on the regular report server but wanted to be sure it would work on the PBI report server. Any performance impacts form having encryption turned on?
Thanks.

[Jon-Heide]

Perf is hard to say as it depends on your workload. TDE in general notes a 3-5% impact, but only way to be sure would be to measure it with your candidate workload. Note that you can use the provided load test framework to try out your scenarios at  https://github.com/Microsoft/Reporting-Services-LoadTest

[nrobinson]

Thanks @Jon-Heide. We'll give it a go.