How Outpost is hosted
Outpost is a hosted service. Outpost runs the servers, databases, and storage behind your console, keeps them up to date, and backs them up. This page explains where your Outpost runs, how its data is kept apart from every other customer’s, and how your endpoints connect to it, so that you can answer the questions your own security review will ask.
Your Outpost
Section titled “Your Outpost”When you sign up, you choose two things that cannot be changed later:
- Your address. A name you choose under
outpostplatform.com. The signup page shows the full address before you confirm it. Your team signs in to the console there, and it is the address your endpoints report to. - Your region. Where your Outpost and its data are hosted. When more than one region is open for signup, the signup page asks you to choose one.
Outpost updates the service for you. There is nothing to install or upgrade on your side except the agent, and the agent updates itself.
How your data is kept apart
Section titled “How your data is kept apart”Every client has its own database. A client’s endpoints, inventory, scripts, tickets, and audit log are stored in that client’s database, not in a table shared with other customers.
On the MSP plan, each organization you manage is a separate client with its own database. The data your practice owns across clients, such as your team, sales, and client invoices, is kept in a separate database for your practice.
Your Outpost address decides which client a request belongs to. A request that arrives for one client cannot name another client, whatever permissions the person making it holds. Permissions decide what someone can do inside their own organization, and never let them reach a different one.
How endpoints connect
Section titled “How endpoints connect”The agent on each endpoint opens the connection to your Outpost. It connects outbound on TCP port 443, so you do not open inbound ports on endpoints or firewalls for management.
- The connection uses mutual TLS 1.3. Your Outpost proves its identity to the agent, and the agent proves its identity to your Outpost.
- Each endpoint receives its own certificate when it enrolls. The agent renews the certificate automatically before it expires.
- An endpoint that is retired, or whose certificate is revoked, is refused on every request.
Remote desktop sessions use their own connections, described in Remote access.
Encryption
Section titled “Encryption”- In transit. The console is served over HTTPS, and agents connect over mutual TLS 1.3.
- Personal data. Personal data fields in a client’s database, such as names and email addresses, are encrypted with AES-256-GCM using a key that belongs to that client alone. Data copied out of one client’s database cannot be read with another client’s key.
- Files. Remote session recordings and ticket attachments are encrypted with AES-256-GCM, each with its own key, and those keys are protected by a key that belongs to the client.
Backups of the service
Section titled “Backups of the service”Outpost backs up its production databases continuously, encrypted, to two separate storage providers, and rehearses a full restore every month. These backups exist to recover the service. They are separate from the endpoint backups you configure in Backup.
Limits
Section titled “Limits”- Your address and region cannot be changed after signup.
- Outpost does not claim certification against a compliance framework on your behalf. Compliance explains how Outpost helps you measure your endpoints against one.
- If you need Outpost on your own infrastructure, or on a network with no internet access, see Self-hosted and air-gapped deployments.
Related
Section titled “Related”Content is licensed CC BY 4.0. Code samples are MIT. Outpost and the Outpost mark are trademarks of Outpost Business Solutions, PBC and are not covered by either license.