---
title: "Offline & Air-Gapped Operation"
url: https://lookeen.com/use-cases/air-gapped-operation
lang: en
description: "Lookeen with no outside connection: Desktop (On-Prem) sends no data at all, Lookeen Server runs entirely on your own network – with local OCR and AI."
published: 2026-10-12T15:30:00+00:00
modified: 2026-10-12T15:30:00+00:00
---

# Offline & Air-Gapped Operation

For isolated networks, labs, public authorities and sensitive areas: Lookeen searches your data without needing any outside connection.

[Talk to us](https://lookeen.com/contact) [Lookeen Server](https://lookeen.com/server)

## What works without the internet

Lookeen needs no outside connection for search, text recognition or AI.

### Lookeen Desktop (On-Prem)

This variant, available on request, sends no data externally at all – no cloud AI, no cloud-based support, no online license activation. Index and data stay on your own drive.

### Lookeen Server on your own network

Lookeen Server runs as a Windows service on your network. It needs no connection to the vendor to run; the optional version check only sends version data and can be turned off.

### Local sources

File servers and network drives, Exchange Server and PST archives are indexed directly on the internal network. Only cloud sources such as Microsoft 365 naturally need a connection to Microsoft.

### Local text recognition and AI

OCR can run locally with Tesseract; Lookeen AI works with language models in your own infrastructure. Cloud services are only used if an administrator explicitly sets them up.

## Security on an isolated network

Without an internet connection, the same rules for sign-in, permissions and installation apply as on the rest of your network.

-   **Sign-in through your Active Directory:** single sign-on via NTLM/Kerberos, with no external identity service. Passwords are never stored in Lookeen.
-   **Permission-aware results:** Lookeen takes over rights from Active Directory, the file system and Exchange and filters every search by them.
-   **Index on your drives:** the index and configuration live locally and can be protected with BitLocker or hardware encryption.
-   **Installation by package:** Lookeen Server installs from an MSI package; clients can be deployed via Group Policy.

Learn more: [Digital sovereignty](https://lookeen.com/use-cases/digital-sovereignty) · [On-premises search](https://lookeen.com/use-cases/on-premises-search) · [AI with local models](https://lookeen.com/use-cases/local-ai)

[All use cases →](https://lookeen.com/use-cases)