ClosingVault never sends your documents to a free AI chatbot. To file documents automatically, ClosingVault uses one contracted classification service, which does not use your documents to train AI. Reading scanned pages, redaction and search all run on ClosingVault’s own servers.

From upload to viewing

1. Upload and storage

   Documents travel to ClosingVault over HTTPS, so they are encrypted on the way in. Before a document is stored, ClosingVault encrypts it with AES-256-GCM, using a key made for that one document. That key is itself encrypted with a master key that ClosingVault holds and keeps apart from the stored files. ClosingVault’s production servers refuse to start without the master key, so they cannot run storing documents unencrypted.

2. Reading the pages

   Text is read from PDFs, Office files, images and plain text on ClosingVault’s own servers. Scanned pages and images are read by OCR software that runs on those same servers. Nothing is sent to an outside OCR service.

3. Filing automatically

   To decide where each document belongs, ClosingVault asks one contracted classification service. It is sent the file name, the name of the folder the document came from, and text taken from the document (for a long document, selected excerpts rather than every page). Long account-style numbers are masked down to their last four digits before anything is sent. The file itself is not sent. The service does not use your documents to train AI.

4. Redaction

   Social Security and taxpayer ID numbers, payment card and bank account numbers, and labeled driver’s license, passport and date-of-birth entries are found by ClosingVault’s own rule-based code, not by AI, on ClosingVault’s own servers. They are blacked out in a separate redacted copy, and the original is kept. Redaction is on by default for a new room, and a room admin can turn it off for that room. While it is on, a buyer is never shown a document until its redaction is complete; until then it reads “Being prepared.”

5. Search

   Search runs inside ClosingVault’s own database, over the text read from each document. What a buyer can find comes from the copy that buyer is allowed to see, not from the original.

6. Who can see what

   Each buyer is given specific folders, and more of the room opens as the deal moves through its stages. Downloading is allowed person by person. Everything a buyer is shown carries a mark that identifies that buyer, the room and the time.

7. Signing in

   Everyone proves they control their email address with a six-digit emailed code. In production, room admins also sign in with an authenticator app; this is enforced, not optional.

8. The record

   Who opened, downloaded or changed what, and when, is written to an append-only log in which each entry is chained to the one before it. The database refuses to edit or delete entries, and the chain can be re-checked, so a later change to the record can be detected.

This is how ClosingVault works today. Want more detail on any step? Ask us through the early-access form.