Imagine treating your company's customer data not like a valuable asset, but like
weapons-grade plutonium
Oh, wow, that is a heavy comparison, right?
But think about it highly toxic
Incredibly dangerous and I mean virtually impossible to clean up once it leaks
Yeah, you really can't just put the genie back in the bottle exactly and today
We are exploring why sending your proprietary data to standard
You know off-the-shelf AI tools is basically the equivalent of carrying that plutonium
in a leaky cardboard box
Which is terrifying for any business totally, but before we unpack the solution to
this massive vulnerability
Let's introduce the supporter making today's deep dive possible safe server, right?
Because if you are running a business an association or really any kind of
organization, you know
The struggle relying on proprietary AI tools and cloud services from massive
vendors like Microsoft or Google
It often means locking yourself into an expensive black box
Oh, yeah
And beyond the unpredictable costs just handing over your sensitive data to these
tech giants raises some incredibly serious
legal regulatory and
Compliance concerns. Yeah data sovereignty becomes critical here
I mean when we talk about email retention financial records audit trails and strict
data protection under the law
Relying on those massive proprietary platforms means losing control
You don't know where your data lives or who might be looking at it, right?
Keeping your data on your own terms is a strict legal requirement in a lot of
industries and that's where safe server comes in
They help organizations replace those expensive opaque tools with secure open
source solutions
And you know often at a fraction of the cost. Yeah, which is a huge win
Definitely they guide businesses from the initial consulting phase all the way
through to operation
Running everything on servers located right in the EU giving you that total control
exactly
So if you want to take back control of your infrastructure
You can find more information at safe server dot DE and that perfectly sets up our
mission for today. It really is
We're looking at documentation from the cybersecurity firm confident security along
with the github repository for an open source framework called open PCC
So our goal here is to figure out how you can easily jump into using powerful AI
models
Without handing over all your confidential data. Yes, and even if you are a total
beginner to cloud architecture
Just stick with us by the end of this deep dive. You will understand exactly how to
secure your AI workflows
Let's start with the sheer scale of the liability we are dealing with
We have to completely rethink what data actually is right because people always say
data is the new oil exactly
They view it as fuel but the author and activist Cory Doctorow
He's the one who provides that striking weapons-grade plutonium quote found in our
sources such a great analogy
It really is he argues that personal data is dangerous. It's long-lasting and once
it has leaked
There is absolutely no getting it back
Yeah, you cannot unleak a database of confidential customer information or you know
proprietary source code that a developer
Accidentally pasted into a public AI chatbot. Oh, man
We've all read those horror stories somebody just trying to debug a script and
suddenly the company's IP is in the training data
Exactly and cryptography professor Matthew D green makes a pretty blunt observation
about this in our source material
What does he say?
He basically notes that in practice if you aren't running an AI model locally on
your own personal device
Your alternative is to ship private data to open AI or someplace sketchier
Where who knows what might happen to some place sketchier? Yeah, that's reassuring
right security technologist Bruce
Schneier refers to this exact vulnerability as the pollution problem of the
information age the pollution problem
Yeah, we are producing toxic runoff every time we interact with these cloud models
Just dumping it into the digital ecosystem and hoping it doesn't poison the well
Wow
He argues that protecting privacy is the environmental challenge of our time and
right now the infrastructure
Most companies use is just fundamentally flawed. Okay, but hold on. Let's look at
this practically for a second
A traditional enterprise server has firewalls end-to-end encryption strict identity
and access management roles
If shipping data to the public cloud is so sketchy
Shouldn't a business just self host their own AI models on their own private
servers? That's the logical next question, right?
Like how could a bad actor possibly dump the memory if the IT department has done
their job?
Configuring those firewalls and access controls. Well the source material from
confidence security
Explicitly addresses this assumption
Traditional self-hosting solutions are actually insufficient for strict compliance
Wait, really why because they still rely on human trust
Those firewalls and access management roles you just mentioned they are
administered by humans
Oh in a traditional self hosted setup the root system administrator always has
ultimate access if a bad actor
Compromises those admin credentials or you know if the server hardware is
physically accessed they can dump the memory straight from the RAM
They can read the logs
So it's a single point of failure the human element exactly from a legally binding
compliance standpoint
Trusting the IT department is not a measurable security metric. I mean that makes
sense. You can't audit a promise, right?
Traditional self-hosting relies on policies. It's essentially a sticky note on the
server saying please don't look at this data
Yeah, that's not gonna hold up in court. No, if an auditor comes knocking you
cannot mathematically prove that the data remained unseen
We have to remove human trust from the equation entirely and build a system that
relies on math instead of policies
Which brings us to the open source blueprint that's attempting to solve this
problem
Open PCC. Yes. It's a framework designed specifically for provably private AI
inference
It's written mostly in the go programming language and the github repository
already boasts
928 stars, which is pretty impressive traction
Definitely and the architecture was heavily inspired by Apple's private cloud
compute
Which millions already rely on for secure AI features?
But open PCC takes those core principles and makes them fully open auditable and
deployable on your own infrastructure
And people in the industry are definitely taking notice a user named abalone on
hacker news called this server engineering
Insanely next level insanely next level. Yeah, they compared the magnitude of this
shift to the massive industry transition to
Stateless architecture 30 years ago or the move to microservices 15 years ago. Wow,
those were massive paradigm shifts
Let's break down why abalone makes that comparison
Because microservices completely changed how applications were built right by
breaking massive
Monolithic applications into small independent pieces, right? So if a one piece
failed the whole system didn't just crash
Right and open PCC is attempting a similar foundational shift, but for privacy it
breaks the assumption of trust
Exactly instead of trusting a single monolithic server and its administrator with
all your data
Open PCC distributes and cryptographically secures the process
So no single entity holds the keys not even the machine's owner
It enforces this through encrypted streaming unlinkable requests and something
called hardware attestation. Okay, let's pause right there
hardware attestation
That is a very dense technical concept is yeah for the listener who doesn't have a
background in cryptography
Let's do an explain like I'm five breakdown
How does hardware actually attest to something and why does that replace the need
to trust the IT guy?
Okay, think of hardware attestation like a digitally enforced wax seal on an
envelope
But built directly into the physical microchip of the server a wax seal on the
microchip
Okay
so when a server boots up a
Specialized security chip on the motherboard takes a mathematical snapshot of the
exact code running on the machine
It measures the operating system the applications everything like taking a
fingerprint of the software exactly
And if an administrator tries to secretly install malicious software to spy on your
data that mathematical snapshot changes
The fingerprint is different. Oh, I see
So before your phone or your computer sends any sensitive AI prompts to that server
It asks the server for that specific mathematical proof if the proof doesn't match
the publicly audited
Safe region of the code your device simply refuses to send the data Wow
So you are no longer trusting an administrator's promise. Nope. You are verifying a
cryptographic guarantee generated by the physical silicon itself
That is brilliant
Okay, so we've covered how we trust the code running on the machine
But there is another major mechanism mentioned in the github repo called an oblivious
HTTP relay or OH TTP
Yes, this seems to handle how the data actually travels to the server. Let's try an
analogy to visualize this. It's like
Sending a highly confidential letter to a brilliant consulting detective. Okay, I
like where this is going
But instead of taking it yourself you give the letter to a blindfolded courier
The courier knows where the detective's office is but has absolutely no idea what
is written inside the letter because it's locked in a safe
The detective receives the safe
Opens it using a special key reads the problem and writes a solution
But the detective has no idea who the courier works for or who originally sent the
letter that analogy perfectly
Isolates the mechanics of the OH TTP relay you are completely separating who is
asking the question from what they're asking
The who from the what exactly the relay acts as the blindfolded courier when you
send an AI prompt
Your IP address your identity goes to the relay but the pump itself is encrypted,
right?
The relay forwards the encrypted prompt to the server actually running the AI model
that compute server decrypts
The prompt generates the answer and sends it back
So the compute server knows what the prompt was but it only sees the IP address of
the relay not you
Yes, and the relay knows who you are, but only sees encrypted gibberish
Neither party holds the full puzzle making it impossible to link your identity to
your proprietary data
Okay, having an open-source framework with hardware attestation and blindfolded
couriers is incredible for deep tech engineers who want to build custom
infrastructure
Oh, absolutely, but for a beginner developer or midsize business
I mean building that from scratch requires a PhD in
Cryptography we need an easy entry point which brings us the practical application
of this framework
Our sources introduce a managed service called cone FSC operated by a firm named
confident security
All right. This service is built entirely on the open source open PCC standard
operating under a core philosophy of four words
Don't trust verify don't trust verify. I love that
Yeah, and they detail specific technical guarantees to back up that philosophy
because they utilize the open PCC framework
They offer zero logging wait zero logging at all zero
And that doesn't mean they promise to delete your logs at the end of the day
It means the system architecture literally prevents data from being logged in the
first place. This is a huge distinction
It is your prompts are never used for AI training and they are never sent to third
parties and most crucially
Even the operator of the server does not have privilege access to the private
computation
Okay, let's dig into that operator lockout because this directly addresses our
earlier discussion about the flaws of self-hosting
Yeah, if confident security physically owns the server in their data center
How are they physically locked out of reading the data processing on their own
machine?
It comes down to secure enclaves within the processor itself
When your encrypted prompt reaches the server
It isn't decrypted in the standard open memory of the computer where an
administrator could see it
Where does it go?
It is routed into a heavily isolated section of the CPU called an enclave
You can think of it as an impenetrable black box built into the silicon
So the data is decrypted inside that black box
Yes
The AI model generates the response inside that black box and the response is
encrypted before it ever leaves
Incredible. So if the server operator dumps the machine's RAM or even attaches a
physical pro to the motherboard to spy on the data in
Transit like physically hacking the machine exactly all they will capture is
encrypted noise
The administrator of the operating system is entirely blind to what is happening
inside the enclave
You know from a development standpoint not having to rewrite an entire application
Just to integrate a new security standard saves months of engineering time. Oh
without a doubt
This was a striking detail in the confidence security documentation
they provide an open AI compatible API and SDK a
Developer doesn't have to learn a completely new protocol to use this providing a
standard interface to leading large language models
Drastically lowers the barrier to entry you simply swap your existing endpoint URL
and your API key to visualize that API swap
It's like having a freight train carrying sensitive cargo
You don't need to rebuild the train the tracks or the cargo from scratch to make it
secure, right?
You just flip a digital switch on the tracks routing the exact same train into a
highly secure verified vault
Instead of an open warehouse. That's a great way to put it
The infrastructure does the heavy lifting while your application continues
functioning exactly as it did before and beyond accessing leading LL M's
The documentation notes that users can host manage and sell their own custom models
with those exact same verifiable privacy guarantees
Yes, and this brings us to the cost factor
proprietary black box AI from major vendors is notorious for unpredictable billing
structures
Oh, tell me about it. The bills can just skyrocket overnight, right?
Confident security tackles that by offering transparent pricing where you pay only
for what you use
With base fees pinned to current market prices per model
So organizations aren't forced to pay a massive premium just to secure their data
Exactly, they get the state-of-the-art security standard without price gouging. Let's
transition to the ultimate application of all this
We've mapped out the architecture the secure enclaves and the easy API swap
But for modern businesses the biggest hurdle to adopting AI is navigating the
massive legal headaches around data compliance
Oh, absolutely. Those legal hurdles are defined by strict regulations like GDPR in
Europe CCPA in California
HIPAA and the healthcare sector and the fines for messing those up are no joke
severe penalties for mishandling personal data
But by utilizing verifiable privacy where an organization can mathematically prove
that data is encrypted unseen and unlogged
Businesses can finally leverage powerful AI models on private data while remaining
strictly compliant
Let's put this into a real-world scenario
Imagine an auditor walks into a hospital's IT room to verify hyper a compliance
regarding a new AI diagnostic tool
Okay stressful day for the IT guy right in a traditional setup that involves weeks
of pulling server logs
interviewing IT staff about access controls reviewing I am policies and ultimately
just
Hoping no internal staff member accidentally left the database exposed. It's a
total nightmare
But with verifiable privacy through a framework like open PCC
What actually happens during that audit the audit transforms from a procedural
nightmare into a mathematical certainty?
The auditor doesn't need to interview the IT staff or comb through thousands of
lines of access logs. Really just skip all that
Yeah
They simply verify the cryptographic signature of the hardware attestation in a
matter of seconds
They can run a mathematical proof confirming that the server is running the audited
code and that the secure enclaves are active
the proof demonstrates that no human not even the system administrator could
possibly have read the patient data as
The documentation concisely puts it this technology provides peace of mind for the
business and a piece of cake for the auditors
A piece of cake for the auditors
I bet they'd love that a study referenced in the sources by Mazuma Hassan, Andrei
Kushnaruk and Elizabeth Boricki
Emphasizes this exact point. Oh, yes
They noted that integrating privacy by design technologies into AI applications
Could mitigate the massive challenges of adopting AI and healthcare and healthcare
is the ultimate stress test
He really is patient records are the most sensitive plutonium
There is if we can solve AI privacy for healthcare using these zero-knowledge
environments
We can solve it for banking legal human resources everything and the sources frame
this level of privacy
Not as a luxury add-on but as an essential baseline for the future of the Internet
I mean it should be Gary Kovacs states in the materials that security and privacy
guarantees are strongest when they're entirely technically
Forcible it shouldn't rely on a company's goodwill or a complex legal contract,
right?
Because goodwill changes when profits drop exactly it must be baked directly into
the code and the silicon and
Venture capitalist Fred Wilson predicts that the company's doing the best job
managing user privacy will ultimately become the most successful
Turning privacy into a core competitive advantage
Marco Altea at toast ring AI captures the underlying philosophy perfectly
He argues that privacy is not an option and that it shouldn't be the price we
accept for just getting on the internet
That's a powerful statement. It is we shouldn't have to surrender our right to
digital privacy or expose our company's intellectual property
Just to participate in the modern AI driven economy tools like open PCC provide the
technical means to finally refuse that trade-off
We are witnessing a necessary transition from an era of security by policy to an
era of security by mathematics and architecture
Beautifully said let's briefly recap the journey we've taken today. We started with
the reality of data as weapons grade plutonium
toxic permanent and
Constantly being leaked into opaque proprietary cloud models, right?
We broke down why traditional self-hosting and firewalls fall short because they
still rely on vulnerable human administrators
We human elements exactly then we explored the open PCC framework discovering how
hardware attestation acts as a digital wax seal
And how oblivious HTTP relays function as blindfolded couriers to separate identity
from data
Which is such a massive leap forward it is and we saw how accessible this has
become through managed services like confident securities
Kind of SCC where securing an application is as simple as flipping a switch on the
API tracks
Utilizing secure CPU enclaves to guarantee operator lockout
It provides the master key for compliance
Allowing organizations to navigate strict regulations like GDPR and hyper through
mathematically enforceable proofs all without sacrificing the efficiency of
artificial intelligence
Or paying exorbitant premiums, which brings us perfectly back to the supporter of
today's deep dive safe server
If the capabilities we just outlined true data sovereignty
mathematically enforceable compliance
Predictable cost structures and protection from massive cloud vendor lock-in if
that aligns with your organization's needs
Safe server is the solution. Yeah, absolutely
Whether you are a business an association or any group looking to replace expensive
opaque AI tools
They provide the necessary expertise safe server is really a partner in your
infrastructure
They can be commissioned for specialized consulting to help find and implement the
exact open source solution for your specific needs, right?
So whether the perfect fit is the open PCC software we explore today or a
comparable open source alternative
They guide you from the planning phase all the way through to secure operation on
servers located right in the EU
You can learn more and take back control of your data at safe server de
Before we wrap up though. There is a final thought. I want to leave you with to mull
over. Okay, let's hear it
We began by discussing the pollution problem of the information age, you know
The toxic runoff of data we leave behind when using standard AI platforms
Right if mathematically enforceable zero-knowledge AI architectures become the new
default
What happens to the massive tech empires build entirely on harvesting and monetizing
our data plutonium?
Oh, that is a fascinating question
If we stop providing the toxic runoff could the information age finally clean up
his pollution problem and force those empires to find a completely
New business model. It's something to think about keep questioning keep exploring
and we'll see you the next deep dive