Data
When your staff put a company document into AI, where does it go?
Three honest answers, and most training will not tell you the difference. Read this before you decide what your team is allowed to paste where — and before you pay anyone to set up something private.
The three answers
What is actually happening to the text
1. A free public chatbot. You are not the customer. Your conversation can be used to improve the model, and it can be read by a person if it is flagged. No company document should ever go into it. This is the one most staff are already using, quietly, because it is free and one tap away.
2. A paid business plan (the business versions of ChatGPT, Claude or Copilot). Your data is not used to train the model by default, it is kept apart from other companies, and you get a contract and an administrator. What does not change: the text still leaves your building. It is processed on their servers, in another country, under their terms, and their staff can reach it for support or if the law requires. For most office work that is fine. For client files under confidentiality, medical records, or anything with an NRIC collection obligation, it may not be.
3. A private model — on a machine you control. Nothing leaves. The trade is real and we will not hide it: a model that fits on an office machine is smaller than the paid frontier ones, so its writing is plainer; and once it is yours, security becomes your job — updates, backups, who holds the key. Running it yourself does not make you compliant with anything. It makes you responsible for everything.
The options
Four ways to run it privately, and who can reach it
Every company that asks us about this ends up choosing one of these four. The setup work is the same in each: USD 630. What changes is the machine, the monthly cost, and how many other people can technically reach it.
A machine in your own office — only your people can reach it
The most private shape there is. A small computer, about the size of a thick book, sitting in your office, running the model. It needs no internet to answer. Cost: a machine from about USD 2,500 (a good graphics card is the expensive part), the model itself is free, USD 630 to set it up, then USD 72 a month for us to keep it updated and answer your questions. Backups: a nightly encrypted copy onto a drive you hold. Only your staff can reach it; we can only reach it if you give us a key, and you can take that key back.
Your own cloud server, your own account — only your people, and a key you can revoke
The same privacy, without buying hardware. The server sits in your own cloud account, billed to you, so the account, the billing and the switch are yours. A rented graphics card capable of running a good model day and night costs about USD 320 a month; a cheaper machine without a graphics card runs a smaller model and answers more slowly. USD 630 to set up, then USD 148 a month for us to run it with you (that monthly is support only — the machine is billed to you, in your own account). Backups: nightly, into storage in your own account, which we cannot read unless you let us. Access: your team, plus a support key you can revoke the same day.
Our private server, a machine of its own for you
You do not want to hold hardware or a cloud account. We run a machine that serves your company and nobody else's, in Singapore, with no public door. Access: your people and us. Cost: quoted when we know how big a model your work needs, because that decides the machine. Backups: nightly, encrypted, kept 30 days, restorable by us on your word.
Our private server, shared machine, your own separate instance
The cheapest shape, and the one we recommend for a first step: several companies share the same physical machine, but each has its own model instance and its own storage, and no company's documents are ever in the same place as another's — up to five companies on one machine. USD 448 a month, setup USD 630. The honest limit: we hold the administrator, so we could technically read your data, and you are trusting our word and our logs. If that sentence is not acceptable to your client, choose the first or second shape.
Backups, in plain words. Every shape gets a nightly copy, encrypted, kept 30 days. A backup you have never restored is a hope, not a backup, so we test one restore with you in the first month and write down what happened. If the data sits in your own account or on your own machine, we cannot read it — which also means we cannot rescue it without the key, so keep the key somewhere that is not the machine.
The checklist
If you run it yourself, these six things, in this order
This is the hour of work almost everyone skips. It is also the part we teach, because it is the part your IT person never gets to.
- Two-factor on the account that owns the server. Not the AI — the hosting account. Whoever owns that owns everything.
- Keys, not passwords, and password login switched off. A key can be revoked in a minute when someone leaves; a shared password cannot.
- Three doors open, the rest shut. Web, and the two the server needs to run. Nothing else.
- The model itself never on the public internet. Only the chat screen in front of it, and only for the people you name.
- Sign-ups off, updates on. A private AI with open registration is a public AI with your name on it.
- A private network for staff who work away from the office (Tailscale or the equivalent), instead of opening the door to the world.
What we will not claim. This does not make you PDPA-compliant on its own, and we are not your auditor. It is not proof against a determined attacker with your administrator's password. What it does do is remove the ordinary ways company documents end up somewhere they should not be.
Taught
We teach this as one extra session
One session of about three hours, for the person who will actually run it, on your own machine or your own account — not on a demonstration. They leave having done all six steps once, with the keys in their hand and a written page saying who can reach what. It is an extra to any level, and it is priced per company: tell us the headcount on the form and the figure comes back in writing the same day.
Next step
Ask the awkward question
If your client contract says the data may not leave your building, say so in the form and we will tell you which of the four shapes fits — including when the honest answer is that we are not the right people for it.