Help center › Your account
Security and data: export, deletion, retention
The long form, with the exact mechanisms, is the security page and the security whitepaper. This guide is what to click.
Taking your data out
- Admin › Settings › Your Data › Export all data downloads one JSON file with users, sites, teams, categories, devices, tickets with their comments and attachment metadata, and knowledge base articles. Any administrator, on any plan, at any time. Very large organizations are capped per collection, and the file says so; email us for a complete platform-side export.
- Any ticket list exports to CSV with its filters from the Tickets page.
- Every export is recorded in the audit log.
Deleting
- A ticket: deleted with its comments; its attachment files are removed from storage.
- A person: disable them to keep their history attributed, or delete them.
- A device: deleted with its history; tickets keep their content and lose the link.
- The organization: an owner, from Admin › Settings › Danger Zone, by typing the organization's slug. Everything is erased, every session and API key is revoked, and backups roll off within 30 days. A deletion certificate is available on request from privacy@beaconhelpdesk.com.
What is kept, for how long
| What | How long |
|---|---|
| Your records | For the life of your organization. Resolved tickets close on their own after 7 days by default; closed tickets stay. |
| Backups | Daily, encrypted, kept 14 days, restores rehearsed. |
| Application logs | 30 days. They carry request ids, routes and timings; never message bodies, passwords or tokens. |
| Audit log | For the life of your organization, under Admin › Audit Log. |
| A demo district sandbox | 14 days, then deleted. |
| After cancelling | Your organization moves to Starter with data intact, or is deleted if you ask; export stays available for 90 days. See Billing and plans. |
Who can see what
- Requesters see their own tickets, public articles and their own devices. Technicians see the organization. Owners and admins see settings. Every request is checked on the server, and the database itself keeps organizations apart.
- Sessions last 15 minutes and renew for 30 days while in use; signing out, changing a password or disabling an account ends them. Passwords are stored as argon2id hashes.
- Single sign-on is OpenID Connect with Google, Microsoft, Clever, ClassLink or any provider; your provider's multi-factor policy applies to Beacon. Beacon has no second factor of its own for password accounts, so use single sign-on for staff.
- API keys are shown once, scoped read or write, revocable, and logged with their last use. Outbound webhooks are signed.
- Beacon staff use a separate login. Support impersonation of your organization writes an audit entry your administrators can see.
What AI features send
The text of the ticket or question being processed, plus your category names, team names and article titles, to Anthropic under terms that do not permit training on your data. Never attachments, passwords or your directory. Each feature (triage, suggested replies, portal deflection) can be switched off under Admin › Settings › AI. The safety screen for signs of crisis runs with AI on or off.
Student data and agreements
For schools, Beacon acts as a school official under your direction (FERPA), collects nothing for marketing (COPPA), and sells nothing (SOPIPA and state laws). A data processing agreement, the Student Data Privacy Consortium NDPA and state addenda are signed on request: privacy@beaconhelpdesk.com. Hosting is in the United States. Security questions and vulnerability reports go to security@beaconhelpdesk.com, acknowledged within two business days.