Straight answers, including the uncomfortable ones.

Yes, when you want us to. Remote support is how most problems get fixed quickly. We use a business remote-support tool that is installed on your devices with your approval, requires our technicians to sign in with multi-factor authentication, and logs each session.

Your policy decides how it works: for example, whether an employee must click to approve each session, or whether unattended access is allowed for servers and after-hours maintenance. We document the choice with you.

Yes, at any time. We work through named, delegated administrator accounts in systems you own — not by borrowing your personal login. Removing those accounts, or the delegated-admin relationship, ends our access. We show you where each one lives during onboarding and keep that list current in your documentation.

Administrators of a system can technically reach much of what is in it, so we won't pretend otherwise. What matters is how that access is used. We only open business files when a task requires it — restoring a backup, fixing a permissions problem, migrating data — and we avoid browsing content that has nothing to do with the job.

Where you need tighter separation (HR folders, owner-only financials), we can set up permissions, sensitivity labels or separate storage so that routine IT work doesn't require access to them, and we'll tell you honestly where the limits of those controls are.

We don't need your employees' personal passwords, and we'll ask you not to send them to us. We use our own admin accounts to do our work. When a password must be reset, the employee sets the new one.

For shared business credentials — a router, a vendor portal — we recommend a business password manager owned by your company, with access for Cydekick granted and revoked like any other staff member.

You do. Your domain should be registered in an account owned by your business, with your business listed as the registrant, and with you able to log in. If it's currently under a former employee, a web designer or an old IT provider, recovering it is one of the first things we help with. We manage DNS through delegated access — we don't hold domains in our own name.

You do. The tenant, the subscription and the billing relationship belong to your business. Cydekick gets delegated administrator access so we can manage it. If you ever leave, you keep everything — users, mailboxes, files and settings — and simply remove our access.

You do. We set up business workspaces — for example ChatGPT Business or Enterprise, or Claude Team or Enterprise — under your company's ownership and billing. Cydekick is added as an administrator so we can manage users, settings and connectors on your behalf. Conversations and projects created by your staff belong to your workspace, not to us.

You leave with everything. Because your accounts, domain, licenses and data are already in your name, there is nothing to transfer back. We provide a documented handoff: the systems we managed, where admin access lives, what we're removing, and anything your next provider should know. Then we remove our access and confirm it in writing.

It depends on which kind of account is being used. OpenAI's published terms for its business offerings (such as ChatGPT Business, ChatGPT Enterprise and the API) say business data is not used to train its models by default. Personal and free accounts work differently and have their own settings, which individuals control.

That's a big reason we move teams onto company-owned business accounts. Before deployment we review OpenAI's current official business privacy and data-retention documentation with you, because these terms can change.

Anthropic's published terms for its commercial offerings (such as Claude Team, Claude Enterprise and the API) say customer content is not used to train its models by default. Consumer plans have separate terms and settings that individual users control, and those have changed over time.

As with any provider, we review Anthropic's current official commercial privacy and retention documentation during setup and flag changes that affect you.

Yes. When someone types or uploads information into ChatGPT, it is sent over the internet to OpenAI's systems to be processed. That's true on every plan. Business plans change what OpenAI may do with that data — for example training defaults, retention and admin controls — but they don't keep the information inside your office.

"Not used for training" is not the same as "never leaves your company." This is the most important distinction we help clients understand.

Yes. Claude runs on Anthropic's infrastructure (and, depending on how it's accessed, a cloud partner's). Anything an employee sends to Claude is transmitted to that provider for processing, and may be stored for a period defined by the plan and your settings. If information must not leave your control, it should be kept out of cloud AI or handled with a private, local system.

Yes, and it's one of the most common ways AI creates risk in small businesses. Someone pastes a client list into a free chatbot to tidy it up, or connects a personal AI account to their work email. No bad intent is needed.

The practical fixes are a clear policy, company-owned accounts with the right settings, training that uses real examples from your business, blocking or discouraging unapproved AI tools where appropriate, and reviewing which connectors and apps have access to company data.

You can reduce the risk significantly, but no tool catches everything. We combine several layers: a data classification your staff can actually remember (our green, yellow and red model), approved tools for each level, restricted connectors, browser and endpoint controls where your licensing supports them, and — for the most sensitive work — a private AI system that doesn't send data to a cloud provider at all.

We'll be clear about what each control does and doesn't do. We won't tell you a system can automatically detect every piece of confidential information, because that isn't realistic.

It happens, so we plan for it. We keep a list of the provider terms your policy relies on — training, retention, data location, admin controls — and review them periodically and when providers announce changes. If a change affects you, we explain it in plain language and recommend what to adjust: settings, policy, which data is allowed, or whether to move a workload to a different provider or to private AI.

Private AI means running an AI model on hardware your business controls — typically a dedicated server in your office or a private environment you own — so that prompts and documents are processed there rather than sent to a public AI provider.

Local models are very capable for many tasks such as summarizing, drafting and answering questions from documents, though the largest cloud models are usually stronger on the hardest problems. We help you decide which work belongs where.

Yes. We can design, install and manage a local AI system: the server hardware, the models, local document search, company sign-in, encrypted storage, backups, patching and monitoring. It can be configured so that prompts and documents don't go to an outside AI provider.

"Local" still needs care: the server must be secured, backed up and kept up to date, and any remote management or software updates are planned so they don't quietly open a path out. We document exactly what connects to what.

Yes. An AI knowledge base lets employees ask questions in plain English and get answers drawn from approved company documents — policies, procedures, manuals, product information — with links back to the source so they can check.

We start with a defined set of documents rather than "everything," clean up duplicates and outdated versions, and decide whether it runs on a business cloud AI service or on private AI depending on how sensitive the material is.

They should. A well-built knowledge assistant respects the same permissions as your files: if an employee can't open a document, the assistant shouldn't use it to answer their question. We design for this from the start using your existing sign-in groups, and we test it before launch. Where a platform can't enforce document-level permissions reliably, we keep sensitive material out of it.

We follow a written offboarding checklist, ideally on or before their last day: disable sign-in, revoke sessions and devices, transfer mailbox and files to a manager, remove them from AI tools, shared password vaults and vendor portals, recover hardware and hardware security keys, and update your records. The same list works in reverse for onboarding, so new hires are productive on day one.

We design backups around what you'd actually need to recover: computers, servers, file shares, and cloud data such as Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace mailboxes and files — which aren't automatically protected the way many people assume.

Good backups follow a few rules: more than one copy, at least one copy off-site, at least one copy that ransomware can't alter, and regular restore tests. We report on backup health and test restores on a schedule, because a backup nobody has tested is a hope, not a plan.

Call us. We help you contain the problem — for example isolating a device, resetting compromised accounts, revoking sessions and blocking malicious mail rules — preserve evidence, and restore normal operations from clean backups.

Cydekick is not a 24/7 security operations center, and we'll say so plainly. For serious incidents we help you bring in your cyber-insurance carrier, specialist incident-response firms and legal counsel, and we work alongside them. Knowing who to call before something happens is part of the security plan we build with you.

We work with many kinds of small businesses, but we don't claim any automatic compliance status — for example HIPAA, PCI DSS, CJIS, SOC 2 or legal-industry requirements. Regulated organizations often need specific contracts (such as business associate agreements), additional technical controls and review by their own compliance or legal advisors.

If you're regulated, tell us early. We'll be honest about what we can support, what would need to be added, and when a specialist is the better fit.

Both. Most day-to-day support is faster remotely. For hardware, network installs, office moves and anything that needs hands on equipment, we come on-site across Dallas–Fort Worth. Outside DFW we support businesses remotely and coordinate local help when needed.

Plans are based on your employees, devices, infrastructure and support requirements, so we quote after a short technology review rather than publishing a one-size price. AI setup and private AI projects are scoped separately. You'll get a written proposal that says what's included and what isn't.