Security

DRAFT — pending attorney review. This page says, in plain words, how ProbatEdge protects what Williams | Starbuck puts in it. Every statement here describes something the software actually does today; the firm confirms the items marked "firm to confirm" before this page goes live. It claims no certification.

Where the data lives

• ProbatEdge runs on Render in the United States. Connections use HTTPS.
• Every record the app stores — matters, people, tasks, notes, consents, generated documents — is encrypted at rest with an authenticated cipher (Fernet: AES with an HMAC). The encryption key is supplied to the server by the firm and is never written to disk by the app; a hosted deployment refuses to start without it.
• The app's own log lines redact client identifiers, and private links carry their tokens in the part of the address a browser never sends to any server, so they do not appear in access logs.

Who can get in

• Staff accounts have one of three roles — administrator, attorney, paralegal — and the role decides what a person can do: only attorneys and administrators approve drafts, record conflict decisions or change firm settings.
• Passwords are stored as salted, iterated hashes (PBKDF2-SHA256), never as the password. Sign-in checks take the same time whether or not the account exists.
• Two-step sign-in with an authenticator app is available to everyone and can be required by role. Codes are single-use; eight one-time recovery codes are issued at setup; repeated wrong codes hold the account's second step.
• Sessions use secure, HTTP-only, same-site cookies. The cookie is marked Secure when the server is configured for HTTPS. Deactivating an account, changing its role or resetting its password takes effect on that person's live sessions at their next request, not just at their next sign-in.
• Password resets and team invitations are single-use links that expire (one hour and seven days); the app keeps only a hash of each link.

What is written down

• Draft documents move through a review record that keeps every version's hash and every decision (who submitted, who approved or sent back, when). An approved document is exported byte-for-byte as approved; an unapproved copy is labelled as such. The app prepares those drafts; it does not file them with the court.
• Consents, questionnaire deliveries, conflict-check decisions and data exports each keep an append-only history naming the staff member and the time.
• A matter with review, questionnaire or document history cannot be deleted — it is closed instead, so the record survives.
• An activity log records sign-ins and sign-outs, failed sign-ins, account, role and two-step changes, matters created, closed, reopened or deleted, Files & sync changes, draft decisions, consents, questionnaire links, exports and setting changes — who, when and a one-line summary, never a password, link or document. Administrators can view and download it; it is kept for about thirteen months.
• A search from the Scia menu looks at templates and at facts already saved in this workspace. Those search words are not written to the application log.

Clients and outside parties

• The client questionnaire is a separate public page that is switched off until the firm turns it on. A client reaches it only through a private link the firm sends; the app stores a hash of the link, limits attempts by address, checks the request's origin, and tells search engines not to index the page.
• Outgoing email goes through the firm's own mail provider over a verified TLS connection. No text-message or e-signature provider is connected.
• Legal research assistance from the AI provider is made with US-only processing and the reply's processing location is checked before use. Client information and matter documents are never sent to it.

Getting your data out

• An administrator can export the firm's data at any time as a ZIP of plain JSON, the original documents and CSV summaries — without passwords, secrets or provider credentials.

Firm to confirm before this page goes live

• Backups and recovery: how often the hosting provider snapshots the database and how a restore is requested.
• Incident contact: who at the firm is told first, and how clients are informed if their information is affected.
• Staff devices: the firm's own rules for the laptops and phones that sign in.

Questions about this page go to admin@dk4gtech.com. To print or save it as a PDF, use your browser's Print command; the page is laid out to fit a single sheet.