Using Activity isolation as a security boundary

In a guest post by Houman Kargaran, the engineering lead at ANZ Bank, the focus is on a compliance-driven architectural decision within a data processing workflow that involves scanning, classifying, and storing personally identifiable information (PII) in a single Temporal Activity to meet strict regulatory requirements. Despite Temporal's preference for small, single-purpose activities, this approach is justified by the need to keep sensitive data within a single Activity to prevent it from being exposed in the Temporal UI. The workflow utilizes an in-house MCP server for PII checks and an internal ML model for classification, ensuring PII is redacted before processing. The architecture also employs a DataStore protocol to allow flexibility in storage backend choices without altering business logic, and it uses heartbeating to maintain workflow reliability, enabling detection and recovery from worker failures. This strategic design ensures that raw data does not cross Activity boundaries, maintaining data privacy and security throughout the process.

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