Security
Run ATE·IQ™ on your own workstation and point it at the LLM provider your organisation already contracts. Then decide what else it connects to. Specs, programs, boards and production data are stored in a local database, and the app's services listen only on the machine itself. Your project data leaves only where you point it: prompts to your own LLM provider, on your own keys, and any git repository, Jama Connect server or external device-model endpoint you connect.
ATE·IQ is a desktop product built from web technology, not a cloud service with a desktop wrapper. The IDE window and the IG-XL agent beside Excel are served by the same local server and work the same projects, and a workbook read from Excel becomes part of the project the IDE sees, with no export step. The desktop shell lives in the system tray, so closing the main window keeps the agent working beside Excel. ATE·IQ has no cloud component of its own.
ATE·IQ ships no model and holds no keys of its own. Configure the provider you already use (Anthropic directly, any OpenAI-compatible endpoint including a self-hosted gateway inside your network, or Azure OpenAI), supply your own credentials, and every AI feature routes through that choice, so your existing egress policy and data agreement with that provider apply unchanged. Switch provider at runtime from Settings. The Context Curator shows which project artefacts a question will draw on before it goes. The validators, analyzers, DIB checker, STDF tools and traceability reconciles are deterministic and run with no provider configured at all.
Every connection is opt-in, and each one is the only traffic it adds.
| Integration | What you get | Where traffic goes |
|---|---|---|
| Git repositories | Clone and sync test-program and board repositories into a project; programs, board exports and STDF files in them are indexed and imported. | To the repository host you connect. Access tokens are stored encrypted. |
| Jama Connect | Pull requirements from a Jama Connect project into a structured spec. | To the Jama Connect server you configure, over HTTPS. |
| External device model | Judge generated programs against a model you run on your side. Your model stays with you. | To the endpoint you register on the project. Its secret is stored encrypted and never shown back. |
| Control | Implementation |
|---|---|
| Network exposure | Local-only by design — services are reachable only from the machine itself, and nothing is exposed to your network beyond what you configure. |
| Stored secrets | Encrypted at rest with AES-256-GCM: the Anthropic API key entered in Settings, Git and Jama Connect tokens, a device-model endpoint's secret and the offline simulator's sign-in password. An OpenAI-compatible or Azure key, or an Anthropic key set in the environment, is read from the workstation's environment, where your own controls apply. |
| Git tokens on disk | A token is handed to git for each command and never written into a cloned repository's configuration. |
| Sign-in | Repeated failed sign-ins are throttled. |
| Excel link | The link between Excel and ATE·IQ runs over localhost, and every call carries a per-user secret generated on first run — a request without it is refused. |
| Workbook file reads | Constrained to the user's own profile and to workbook file types — it cannot be used to read arbitrary files. |
| API authentication | Every page and every API surface authenticates the caller in its own right, and the product's internal calls are authenticated as well — there is no unauthenticated back door between components. |
Generation, indexing and ingest run in a background worker without blocking the app. A failed job is retried, a job that still fails is shown with its error rather than dropped, and work interrupted by a crash is picked up again on restart. The status bar keeps checking the platform's health while you work.
| Part | Today |
|---|---|
| Excel add-in | Installed per user with no administrator rights. In plain Excel an ATE·IQ ribbon tab opens the IG-XL agent beside the open workbook, with nothing configured per test program; under IG-XL, which starts Excel without global add-ins, the program's References sheet names the add-in and Open Agent sits on the Add-ins tab. |
| Desktop app | Set up with you during the pilot rather than from a single installer: a runtime and a local database on the workstation, both bound to the machine itself. A single packaged Windows executable is the direction of travel. |
| LLM provider | Any of the three above; a self-hosted OpenAI-compatible endpoint keeps prompts inside your network. |
| Excel on another machine | Excel in a virtual machine or on a second PC connects with a copy of the per-user secret and a network path to the app; nothing binds to the network by default. |