Security and Compliance
What the Outpost discloses, what stays on your machine, and what we can do
The Outpost runs on your network; source files and the search index live on your machine. You decide per folder on the Outpost what MeinGPT gets to see in order to answer a question — and that setting is what this page is about.
Attention
On-premise does not mean "nothing leaves". It means: only what you release. An answer without the passage it rests on would be no answer, so at minimum the matching passage travels to MeinGPT with every question. How much more is up to you.
The release level — the one setting that matters
Every shared Outpost folder has a release level. It decides what leaves the machine when someone asks a question.
| Level | What travels to MeinGPT |
|---|---|
| Text only | The matching passages together with the text directly before and after them, plus the file name. The default. |
| Original files | Everything from “Text only” plus the file itself. Needed when people should verify an answer against the original, or reuse a template. |
A lower level that released only the matching passages and the file name is gone: whoever may read one passage can ask a second question for the next one and assemble the document that way. It cost answer quality and protected nothing. It is no longer offered when setting a folder's level, but existing data pools still set to it keep working unchanged.
What exactly leaves on a search
At the Text only level, a normal search works like this:
- The matching passages leave, about 1,000 characters each, by default up to ten per search request. They come with the text directly before and after them, the file name including its path, and small details such as position and creation date.
- MeinGPT cannot retrieve whole documents from the Outpost at this level.
- Limitation: A short document (roughly under 3,000 characters) can end up almost entirely in a single hit through its neighbouring text. If a search returns many hits from the same document, a longer continuous stretch of it can be included, and several questions about the same document can gradually reveal more of it.
At the Original files level, the file itself can additionally be downloaded through MeinGPT by people who have access to the data source. The AI does not load Outpost files.
It is set on the Outpost, per folder — in the program on the machine, under Shares → open the folder. Not in the web console.
Until recently it was the other way round: a dropdown in the platform, one level
for every folder on a machine, operated by someone who cannot see the disk.
Whoever decides that \\fileserver\HR should be searchable is the same person
who knows whether its files may leave the building — and they are at the
machine, not in a browser.
The folder reports its level with every folder report, and MeinGPT enforces it: requests asking for more than the folder releases are refused before anything is read.
What an update does not change
A folder bound before this change reports no level. It is treated as text only — the careful side. No folder starts releasing files because of an update.
The connection
Outbound only
The Outpost opens the connection itself. No inbound port, no firewall rule, no service exposed to the internet.
A key per organization
The tunnel is signed with a key that belongs to your organization alone — not with a shared secret.
Technically it is an outbound, TLS-encrypted WebSocket connection to the MeinGPT
Bridge — not a VPN. Your network team has nothing to open; outbound HTTPS is
enough. Private root certificates are supported (see
Your own root certificate)
and checked by the setup assistant. The Outpost uses the operating
system's proxy settings (including group policies, PAC and WPAD) for pairing,
the MeinGPT API and the ongoing search tunnel to bridge.meingpt.com; SOCKS4
and SOCKS5 are supported. Proxies that require authentication (NTLM, Kerberos)
are not yet supported by the tunnel — in that case the bridge host must be
allowed directly for outbound HTTPS on port 443.
What stays on the machine
The platform cannot set any of these. They exist only on the device, by design: if the cloud could add a folder, the cloud could read anything on that machine.
- Which folders are shared. This is the actual boundary.
- Which local services are reachable, and with which credentials. The password is never transmitted to MeinGPT.
- The root certificate for your TLS inspection.
- Where embeddings go — the address of the model that turns your documents into vectors.
Revoking access
Both directions, with the same effect:
- In the web console ("Unpair device"): the secret is rotated and outstanding pairing codes are deleted. The right move when a machine is stolen, decommissioned, or no longer reachable.
- On the device ("Unpair this device"): the same — the Outpost revokes itself at MeinGPT before clearing anything locally. If MeinGPT cannot be reached, the app says so rather than reporting success, and offers "Disconnect locally" instead — access then stays valid at MeinGPT and has to be revoked in the web console.
Both are recorded in your organization's audit log.
Further reading
Note
Outpost-specific privacy: more on the architecture and how your data is handled is in the Outpost privacy documentation.