Securing Quick access from corporate networks with AWS PrivateLink AWS published a walkthrough for connecting on-premises data sources to Amazon Quick through AWS PrivateLink VPC endpoints, keeping AI-agent and dashboard traffic off the public internet. The setup assumes an existing AWS Direct Connect or Site-to-Site VPN link to the VPC, then layers security groups and VPC endpoint policies for defense in depth. AWS notes that Quick Index knowledge-base VPC connections currently support only Amazon Redshift, so sources such as Confluence, SharePoint, Box, Google Drive, OneDrive and Amazon S3 cannot use a Quick VPC connection today. Artificial Intelligence https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/machine-learning/ Securing Quick access from corporate networks with AWS PrivateLink When enterprise data sits behind a corporate firewall or in a private on-premises data center, there’s no direct network path from AWS, even though the AI agents and dashboards in Amazon Quick can query virtually any data source. Administrators must make sure their sensitive enterprise data isn’t exposed to the public internet while being accessible for AI-driven insights and actions. For many enterprises, routing traffic over the public internet introduces unacceptable risk. Regulatory frameworks such as HIPAA, FedRAMP, and PCI-DSS often mandate that sensitive data remain within controlled network boundaries. Even where compliance isn’t the primary driver, exposing internal data paths increases the attack surface, complicates audit trails and introduces variable latency that can degrade the user experience. This walkthrough shows you how to connect on-premises data sources to Amazon Quick privately, without traffic traversing the public internet. It assumes you already have AWS Direct Connect or an AWS Site-to-Site VPN linking your on-premises environment to your virtual private cloud VPC . From that foundation, we configure VPC endpoints powered by AWS PrivateLink so that Quick can reach your private resources over the AWS backbone, then layer security groups and VPC endpoint policies for defense in depth. By the end, you will have a network architecture that keeps traffic between Quick and your on-premises data sources off the public internet, reducing the attack surface, providing consistent low-latency connectivity, and giving you a clear audit trail for compliance. Amazon Quick and establishing private network connectivity Amazon Quick is an AI-powered workspace that brings search, analytics, research, and automation into a single conversational experience. Understanding which components reach your private network, and how, determines the architecture in the sections that follow. Data access in Amazon Quick falls into two paths. User-facing traffic covers anyone opening the Quick console, interacting with a dashboard, making an API call, or using Quick Desktop. All this routes through VPC endpoints see VPC endpoints for user and API access , keeping user sessions off the public internet. Data-fetching traffic is when Quick itself reaches into your network to pull data. This is handled by VPC connections see VPC connections for data source access , and it’s where most of the architectural decisions lie. The features and integrations that initiate data-fetching connections are: - Amazon Quick Sight queries on-premises databases PostgreSQL, MySQL, SQL Server, Oracle, and others directly through ENIs placed in your VPC. This is the heaviest consumer of VPC connections. - Amazon Quick Flows and Amazon Quick Automate are separate automation features. Flows handle repeatable tasks. Automate handles complex, multi-system orchestration with human-in-the-loop. Both invoke action connectors, including MCP servers hosted privately in your VPC. Any workflow that calls an internal API routes through this path. - Quick Agents underpin all conversational interactions and can invoke action connectors directly. When a custom agent calls a privately hosted MCP server or internal API, traffic flows through the VPC connection. - Amazon Quick Index builds a unified search layer across connected sources such as Confluence, SharePoint, and Amazon Simple Storage Service Amazon S3 . For data inside your VPC or on premises, knowledge base VPC connections are currently supported only for Amazon Redshift. Sources such as Confluence, SharePoint, Box, Google Drive, OneDrive, and Amazon S3 can’t use a Quick VPC connection today see Supported VPC data sources https://docs.aws.amazon.com/quick/latest/userguide/vpc-connection-supported-data-sources.html . You can still restrict Amazon S3 bucket access to a VPC endpoint through a bucket policy, which is a separate mechanism. - Amazon Quick Research accesses enterprise sources behind the firewall alongside public internet data for its citation-backed reports, using the VPC connection when reaching private sources. - Apps in Quick build interactive web applications on top of structured data and action connectors, inheriting the same VPC connectivity as Quick Sight and Flows. - Quick Spaces organize content from the preceding features but don’t initiate their own data connections. These two traffic paths require two distinct private connectivity mechanisms that work together: - VPC endpoints AWS PrivateLink : Handle user-facing traffic such as accessing the Quick website, making API calls, and administrative access. These keep user traffic off the public internet. - VPC connections: Handle data source traffic. Amazon Quick reaches into your VPC and by extension, your on-premises network to fetch data from databases, Amazon Redshift knowledge base sources, and internal APIs. These are configured within the Quick console. Configuring private connectivity This section walks through the four building blocks in order: VPC endpoints for user and API access, VPC connections for data source access, VPC endpoints for AWS data services, and outbound access to required external domains. Prerequisites Before configuring private connectivity for Quick, make sure the following are in place: - An active AWS account with an Amazon Quick Enterprise subscription VPC connections require Enterprise edition . - An existing VPC in the AWS Region where Quick is deployed. - A supported AWS Region. Quick website VPC endpoints are not available in the AWS China Regions or the AWS GovCloud US Regions. - An AWS Direct Connect connection or Site-to-Site VPN established between your on-premises network and your VPC. This is the private path that carries traffic from your data center into AWS. - AWS Identity and Access Management IAM permissions to create and manage VPC endpoints, security groups, and Quick administration. To create VPC connections, the administrator’s IAM identity also needs quicksight:CreateVPCConnection , quicksight:DescribeVPCConnection , quicksight:ListVPCConnections , quicksight:UpdateVPCConnection , quicksight:DeleteVPCConnection , ec2:DescribeSubnets , ec2:DescribeVpcs , ec2:DescribeSecurityGroups , iam:ListRoles , and iam:PassRole scoped to the VPC connection execution role. - Access to your organization’s DNS management Route 53 private hosted zones or on-premises DNS forwarders , as private DNS resolution routes traffic through VPC endpoints rather than public addresses. VPC endpoints for user and API access AWS PrivateLink VPC endpoints powered by PrivateLink handle all user-facing traffic to Amazon Quick, including the website, API calls, and embedded content. They prevent users from needing to traverse the public internet to access the Amazon Quick console. As shown in Figure 1: 1 a client on the corporate network sends a request to Quick; 2 the request travels over AWS Direct Connect, through the Direct Connect gateway, into your VPC; 3 the Quick VPC endpoint evaluates the endpoint policy and allows or denies the request; 4 allowed requests reach Amazon Quick over the AWS network. Planning your VPC endpoint architecture When planning your endpoint architecture, begin by identifying the AWS Region where your Quick account is deployed, as VPC endpoints must be in the same Region. Choose subnets across multiple Availability Zones for endpoint ENI placement, and make sure those subnets have routes to your on-premises network through Direct Connect or VPN. Design security groups that restrict traffic on the endpoint ENIs to only required ports and source ranges. If you want all traffic routed privately including the calls Amazon Quick makes to Amazon S3, Amazon Redshift, and Amazon Athena , plan VPC endpoints for those services as well see Configuring data source VPC endpoints . Creating VPC endpoints for Quick Quick requires two interface VPC endpoints for full private access: - Website access endpoint – Service name com.amazonaws.