Security architecture

The page for your IT person.

Everywhere else on this site we speak plainly. This page is for the reviewer, the auditor, the insurer, and the nephew who knows computers. Precise claims only. For the business-language version, see compliance.

Threat model

We assume the worst machine wins.

The design assumption: every protected endpoint will eventually be fully compromised. The attacker holds local admin, every stored credential, and the backup agent's own configuration. The design goal: that attacker can, at worst, damage the current backup of that one device. Never the recovery history. Never another device. Never another customer.

ScenarioOutcome
Ransomware with full admin on one device Can corrupt that device's current backup at most. Sealed Vault copies and version history survive. Other devices unaffected.
Attacker steals the device's storage credentials Those credentials reach one device's own storage area only, and cannot touch Vault snapshots at all.
Storage provider is breached Attacker obtains ciphertext. Without the customer's key, it is noise.
EverBack itself is breached We hold no customer keys and no plaintext. Control-plane compromise cannot decrypt customer data.
Malicious insider at EverBack Same answer. The math does not care who signs the paycheck.
Customer loses their encryption key and recovery kit Data is unrecoverable. By anyone. We accept this consequence openly, and the onboarding makes the recovery kit hard to skip.
Architecture

Two planes. The data never crosses them.

Data plane: the agent on each device encrypts locally and writes directly to that device's own storage area over SSH/SFTP. Backup payloads never pass through EverBack's servers. There is no central service that sees, buffers, or could log customer file data.

Control plane: our backend handles enrollment, policy, health telemetry (counts, timestamps, sizes; never file contents or names), storage provisioning, and Vault snapshot scheduling. It holds no keys capable of reading any customer's data.

Isolation: one customer, one isolated storage unit. Within it, one device, one locally-generated SSH keypair, one subaccount confined to its own directory. No shared credentials anywhere in the fleet.

Encryption & format

Built on restic. On purpose. In the open.

The backup engine is restic, an open-source repository format with a decade of public scrutiny. We chose it precisely so you do not have to trust our proprietary crypto. There isn't any.

Encryption at restAES-256 in counter mode with Poly1305-AES authentication. Performed client-side, before upload.
Key derivationscrypt. The repository key is generated on the customer's device and never transmitted.
TransportSSH (SFTP) with per-device keys and pinned host keys.
DeduplicationContent-defined chunking. Only changed chunks travel or are stored.
IntegrityEvery blob is content-addressed by SHA-256 and cryptographically verified on read and during periodic checks.
Vault immutabilityStorage-layer point-in-time snapshots, read-only by construction. No endpoint credential can list, alter, or delete them.
IndependenceWith their key, a customer can restore using stock open-source tooling, without any EverBack software or service.

Verify it yourself: any customer can point standard restic at their own repository and confirm every claim on this page: the encryption, the integrity checks, the independence. We think a security product you cannot independently verify is a rumor.

Operations

The unglamorous parts, done properly.

Restore verification: we periodically restore and hash-verify real samples from customer repositories (ciphertext operations only; we verify integrity, not contents) so "backups work" is measured, not assumed.

Monitoring: every device reports backup health. Silence, failures, and abnormal change patterns raise alerts on our side before the customer notices anything.

Data residency: customer data is stored in the region chosen at signup: United States or European Union. It does not move between regions.

Key handling at onboarding: the recovery kit (customer's key, printed or stored offline) is generated during setup and verified before we consider a customer protected. Losing every copy of the key means losing the data. We say this out loud during onboarding, twice.

Responsible disclosure

Found something? Tell us. We pay attention.

Report security issues to security@everback.cloud. We respond within one business day, we do not threaten researchers, and we credit findings publicly if you want the credit. Good-faith research against your own account and data is welcome.

Next chapter Managing IT for other businesses? Wholesale pricing, silent deployment, and our engineers behind yours.