This page describes how Desk handles your data today. It is written to be checked, not to reassure, and it will change as the product does. Where a control is planned rather than in place, it says so.
Isolation
Each organization's data is separate from every other customer's. Every knowledge base is its own database file; uploaded originals are stored per organization and per knowledge base. Every request is authorized against the caller's organization and knowledge base membership before any data is read. Dedicated single-tenant deployments are available on request.
Hosting
Desk runs on Render, a managed cloud platform, in the United States. Data at rest is stored on encrypted persistent disks. Data in transit is protected by TLS. Backups of knowledge base data are taken on a schedule and retained for 30 days.
Access control
Accounts use email and password; passwords are stored only as salted PBKDF2 hashes. Sessions expire after 30 days and are revoked on password change or deactivation. Roles are platform owner, organization admin, and member. Admins manage people and knowledge bases within their own organization only. Administrative actions (creating or deactivating accounts, changing access, changing roles) are written to an audit log.
Single sign-on (SAML or OIDC) is planned and not yet available.
Model providers
To read files into records, answer questions, and enable semantic search, Desk sends text to third-party model providers. Currently: Anthropic and OpenAI for language models, and Voyage AI for embeddings. Each is used under terms that prohibit retaining the content for training. Which provider handles which task is configurable per deployment and can be restricted to a single provider for customers who require it.
Your content is never used to train models by Desk or by these providers.
Data handling
Uploaded files are stored as received. Text is extracted and indexed for search; records and facts are derived and stored with citations to the source passage. Deleting a file removes its text, index entries, and the records that only it supported. Deleting a knowledge base removes all of its content. On account closure, all of an organization's data is deleted within 30 days, with backups overwritten within a further 30.
Application security
Desk is developed with automated tests covering authorization boundaries, and dependencies are kept current. Files are processed in isolation from the web process. We welcome reports of vulnerabilities at hello@try-desk.com and will acknowledge them within two business days.
What is not yet in place
We prefer to say this plainly. Desk does not yet hold a SOC 2 report or ISO 27001 certification. Single sign-on, customer-managed encryption keys, and regional hosting outside the United States are not yet available. If any of these is a requirement for your organization, tell us during the demo and we will give you a straight answer about timing.
Contact
Security questions and vulnerability reports: hello@try-desk.com.