Coding Assistants
Windsurf
Medium riskAgentic AI code editor (formerly Codeium) offering completions, chat, and the Cascade multi-file agent, now owned by Cognition after a turbulent 2025.
Is Windsurf safe for confidential data?
Windsurf's data posture is tier-dependent: the vendor's standing policy is no training on non-permissive data, but individual Free and Pro plans rely on settings and defaults, while Teams and Enterprise plans get zero-data-retention and contractual no-training terms. The bigger governance wrinkle is ownership churn — the 2025 sequence of a collapsed OpenAI acquisition, a Google licensing deal that took the founders, and Cognition buying the remainder means the entity holding your code context has changed twice, so any commitment made under Codeium should be reconfirmed in writing with Cognition before an enterprise commitment.
Risk by plan
The same product often carries very different terms depending on the tier — consumer plans are where the exposure concentrates.
Covered by the no-training-on-non-permissive-data policy, but relies on defaults and telemetry settings rather than a contract; no signed agreement with the organization.
Same policy footing as Free; zero-data-retention is available but must be enabled by the user, so org exposure depends on each developer's settings.
Zero-data-retention by default, admin controls, SSO, and a data processing agreement — the minimum tier for organizations with data-handling obligations.
Contractual no-training terms, dedicated or self-hosted/air-gapped deployment options, SAML/SCIM, and negotiable residency.
Data handling
Training on inputs
Stated policy is no training on non-permissive (private) code. Individual plans depend on telemetry settings, with optional zero-data-retention on Pro; Teams and Enterprise plans include zero-data-retention and contractual no-training terms.
Retention
Zero-data-retention mode processes prompts and code transiently without storage; it is default on Teams/Enterprise and optional on individual plans. Outside that mode, retention follows the Cognition privacy policy.
Residency
Hosted cloud service; Enterprise offers dedicated infrastructure and self-hosted or air-gapped deployment for organizations that cannot send code off-network. No published Canadian residency option — Canadian firms subject to PIPEDA or Quebec Law 25 should confirm processing locations in the DPA.
Compliance
- SOC 2Yes
- GDPR / DPAYes
- HIPAA BAANot verified
Certifications typically apply to specific tiers and contracts — confirm scope in writing before relying on them.
New to these frameworks? See our plain-language guides to SOC 2 and the other AI compliance standards.
Enterprise controls
- SSO / SAML and SCIM provisioning
- Org-wide zero-data-retention (Teams/Enterprise)
- Self-hosted / air-gapped deployment (Enterprise)
- Admin seat and policy management
- Data processing agreement
Frequently asked questions
Does Windsurf train on your code?
Not on private code, per the vendor's no-training-on-non-permissive-data policy, and Teams/Enterprise plans make that contractual with zero-data-retention by default. On individual Free and Pro plans the guarantee rests on policy and per-user settings rather than a signed agreement, so an organization's real posture is whichever plan its developers are actually on.
Is Windsurf safe for sensitive code after the Cognition acquisition?
The product's stated data commitments carried over, but the company holding your data changed hands twice in 2025 — the OpenAI deal collapsed, Google licensed the technology and hired the founders, and Cognition acquired the remaining company in July 2025. For sensitive codebases, treat pre-acquisition assurances as stale: get current retention and training terms in writing from Cognition, or use the Enterprise self-hosted option so code never leaves your network.
Our engineers already use the free Windsurf editor. Is that a problem?
It is the common gap: free-tier use happens under consumer terms with no DPA, no admin visibility, and settings-dependent data handling, while the code being pasted or indexed is the company's. If Windsurf is going to be used, move active users onto Teams or Enterprise so the no-training and retention terms are contractual, and put monitoring around the unsanctioned tools that remain.
Policy changelog
- Initial entry published from Cognition's published security documentation and cited coverage.
Sources
This profile summarizes the vendor's published policies as of the verification date. It is not legal advice.
Windsurf is probably already in your organization.
Sanitized AI shows you who is using it and redacts sensitive data from prompts before it leaves your control.
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