Sensitive data protection in Elephas
Elephas is built for real work with your PDFs, notes, Apple Notes, meeting transcripts, contracts, and research. Indexing stays local on your Mac. When you choose cloud AI, Elephas is designed to reduce exposure by redacting common personal information and many structured identifiers before supported processing steps.
This page explains where Elephas is strongest today, how to choose the right workflow for the task, and when offline mode is the better fit.
For accuracy, some cloud requests may include the question or instructions you type, while Elephas applies redaction to supported processing steps and retrieved content where available.
Local indexing
Your source files stay on your device during setup and indexing.
Redaction layer
Sensitive details can be masked before many cloud processing steps.
Your choice
Run offline, use cloud providers, or bring your own API key.
What Elephas protects well today
Coverage is strongest when sensitive details are common personal information or structured identifiers with clear patterns or labels.
Common personal information
- Names
- Email addresses
- Phone numbers
- Postal addresses
- Dates and organizations
Legal and policy work
- Case numbers
- Docket and matter references when labeled
- Client and contact details
- Links to private portals
- IP addresses in logs and audit trails
Medical and healthcare workflows
- MRNs and patient IDs when labeled
- Member and policy IDs when labeled
- NPI and NHS numbers when labeled
- Names, emails, phone numbers, addresses
- Meeting notes and referral context
Financial and operational data
- Credit card numbers
- IBANs
- Routing numbers
- Account numbers when labeled
- SWIFT/BIC and labeled passport or license numbers
Best fit
Built for teams that handle sensitive work every day
Lawyers, medical professionals, legal and policy teams, and executives often need AI help without sending raw documents into a generic cloud workflow. Elephas is designed to keep the knowledge workflow usable while giving you more control.
Lawyers and legal operations
Contracts, pleadings, client notes, research memos, docket references, and private case material.
Medical professionals and healthcare operations
Patient notes, referral summaries, provider identifiers, plan IDs, and coordination workflows.
Legal and policy teams
Internal drafts, regulatory comments, working papers, and sensitive reviews shared across a small team.
Executives and chiefs of staff
Board materials, travel details, payment instructions, private portals, and sensitive operating updates.
What this page means
- Elephas can help reduce exposure by redacting common personal information before supported cloud processing steps.
- Coverage is stronger for structured data and labeled identifiers than for open-ended prose.
- Indexing remains local on your Mac.
- You control whether AI runs offline, through cloud providers, or with your own API key.
What this page does not claim
- It is not a claim of complete PII protection or universal detection.
- It does not mean every country-specific identifier is covered.
- It does not replace your internal review, compliance process, or security controls.
- It does not guarantee that every sensitive sentence in free-form narrative will be redacted.
We're actively improving protection
Elephas is under continuous development to expand redaction coverage, support more identifier types, and provide a higher level of data protection over time. Our goal is to give you the strongest practical protection for real work, and we ship improvements regularly.
Use offline mode when you need the highest-control workflow
If the work is especially sensitive, if the data is not clearly structured, or if your policy requires the least possible exposure, use Elephas with a local model. That keeps both indexing and inference on your device.
A practical way to work more safely with AI
The goal is not abstract privacy language. The goal is better control for real work.
1
Keep your knowledge base local
Your PDFs, notes, spreadsheets, and transcripts are indexed on your Mac, so setup does not require sending your source material away.
2
Use redaction before cloud processing
For cloud workflows, Elephas can redact common personal information and many structured identifiers before supported processing steps, helping you work with more confidence.
3
Match the mode to the task
Use offline mode for the highest-control workflows. Use cloud AI when you want more capability and the task is a good fit for redaction-first processing.
4
Stay grounded in your own sources
Elephas is a personal knowledge workspace. It helps you work from your own files and notes instead of bouncing sensitive work into a generic chatbot flow.
Sensitive work deserves a better default
Use AI on your work with more control and less exposure
Elephas combines local-first indexing, protection before processing, and flexible AI modes so you can choose the workflow that best matches the sensitivity of the task.