Privacy & security
Privacy starts with where your documents are processed.
Soveau is being designed as a local-first application: routine document processing is intended to happen on your own device by default. This page explains that approach, and what it does and doesn’t mean.
The document boundary
Routine document processing stays on your device by default.
Soveau is being designed so that the work of preparing a document happens on your computer. Where practical, that includes:
- Opening and importing documents
- Detection and OCR
- Review
- Redaction or pseudonymization
- Sanitization
- Verification
- Batch processing
- Safe Copy export
This describes design intent. It isn’t a promise that every possible future operation will work offline, and we’ll say plainly if something needs a connection.
What doesn’t need your document
Document processing and online services are different things.
Later, Soveau may use online services for the business side of the product. They are intended to stay separate from document processing, and not to become a route for your documents.
Intended to stay on your device
- Your documents and originals
- Text extracted from them
- Findings and review decisions
- Safe Copies
What future online services may handle
- Authentication
- Subscription status and licensing
- Seats and devices
- Updates
- Minimal, justified telemetry
Routine confidential document contents should not need to be uploaded to Soveau or NarrowQuest servers for processing.
Any telemetry is intended to be minimal and justified, and to exclude document content, extracted text, and file names.
Originals and Safe Copies
Your original stays yours. The Safe Copy is a new file.
Soveau is designed never to silently overwrite the document you started with.
Original
The source file you supplied. Soveau treats it as read-only and leaves it where you keep it.
Safe Copy
A new, privacy-processed derivative, created separately for sharing or reuse and checked before export.
Beyond the black rectangle
Redaction is not just a black rectangle.
Covering text on a page isn’t the same as removing it. Soveau’s approach separates the work into three roles, each with a job of its own.
Transformation
Applies your approved decisions by removing or replacing the information itself, not just covering it.
Sanitization
Addresses hidden material that can survive visible edits, such as document metadata and other hidden content, depending on the format.
Verification
Checks the finished Safe Copy independently, looking for protected information that may remain.
Human control
Detection assists. People decide.
Soveau is meant to reduce repetitive work, not to take decisions out of your hands.
Detection is assistance, not authority
Findings are suggestions for you to judge, not verdicts.
You review and approve
Nothing is changed in the Safe Copy until you have approved it.
Uncertainty is surfaced, not hidden
Uncertain findings are meant to be shown for closer review rather than quietly cleared.
Verification is another control
The Safe Copy is checked once more before export, in addition to your own review.
See the workflow, or try it early.
The workflow page walks through each step. The pilot is for people who want to try Soveau as it takes shape. Access isn’t open yet, and we can’t promise dates.