Air-gapped by design

Spy agencies protect their most sensitive work inside a SCIF — a Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility. It is, quite literally, a room within a room: a space physically isolated from the networks and signals surrounding it.

Many of our tools are built around the same principle, translated into software. Once downloaded onto a computer, they are ready to perform in similarly isolated, air-gapped conditions — running entirely on their own, with no ongoing connection to the internet required.

The tool itself becomes the sealed room. Everything it needs to operate travels with it, and nothing it processes has to leave. That is the gap worth minding — the space between a tool that merely claims to protect your data, and one that was never wired to transmit it in the first place.

Look out for the Mind the Gap symbol on our tool pages. It marks where you can find out more about how that tool performs within air-gapped data facilities, such as Trusted Research Environments (TREs) and Trusted Data Environments (TDEs).