Offline data discovery · Windows
Find sensitive data before it leaks. Nothing leaves the machine.
VellumSoft scans PST/email exports, documents, and images for US & Canadian PII/PHI — 100% offline, zero network egress, fail-closed by design. Built for the teams that answer to PHIPA, Law 25, PIPEDA, and HIPAA.
Windows 10/11 · one-time purchase · no cloud, no telemetry
The problem
Regulated data accumulates in places nobody audits.
It hides in archives
Decade-old .pst files, forwarded attachments, and scanned intake forms sitting on a shared drive. Nobody knows what is in them.
Cloud DLP moves your data
SaaS scanners upload the very records you are trying to protect. For PHI, that is a new vendor, a new DPA, and a new breach surface.
Manual review misses things
Sampling a mailbox by eye does not scale, is not repeatable, and produces nothing an auditor will accept as evidence.
How it works
Three steps, entirely on the workstation.
- 01
Point it at emails and files
PST / OST / MSG / EML mail stores, PDF and DOCX documents, plain text, and images (JPG/PNG/TIFF) via built-in OCR.
- 02
Scan locally
Pattern, checksum, and context rules run on the local CPU. No index is uploaded, no sample is phoned home. If a network call were attempted, the scan fails closed.
- 03
Export an auditor report
A signed PDF with counts, file paths, data types, and regulation mapping — plus a CSV of findings for remediation tracking.
> source: D:\archive\2019-mailbox.pst
> engine: local · egress: blocked · ocr: enabled
> scanned 41,208 items / 6,912 attachments
> report_2024-11-04.pdf written to local disk
What it detects
Identifier coverage by region.
United States
- SSN / ITIN
- Medicare & Medicaid ID (MBI)
- NPI (provider ID)
- Driver's licence (state formats)
- US passport number
- Bank account / routing (ABA)
Canada
- SIN (Luhn-validated)
- OHIP (ON) · RAMQ (QC)
- PHN (BC/AB/MB/SK)
- Provincial driver's licence
- Canadian passport number
- Transit / institution number
Global
- Credit card PAN (Luhn)
- IBAN / SWIFT
- Date of birth in context
- Email, phone, postal address
- Passwords & API keys in text
- VIN, IP / MAC, geo-coordinates
Health & special-category data
Contextual detection for health conditions, diagnoses, and medication names, plus dates of birth and medical record numbers in context — the health data most regulations treat as elevated risk. Additional special categories (immigration status, union membership, religion, sexual-orientation references) are shown in the tool as planned detectors and clearly marked not-yet-detected — we don't claim detection we can't validate.
Coverage & limitations — read this
- No scanner finds everything. VellumSoft reduces unknown exposure; it does not certify that a data set is clean.
- OCR accuracy drops on low-resolution scans, handwriting, and skewed images. Those items are flagged as low-confidence rather than silently passed.
- Encrypted or password-protected archives are reported as unreadable, never skipped quietly.
- Free-text identifiers without surrounding context (a bare 9-digit number) are reported with a confidence score, not asserted as a match.
Why offline
The safest place for regulated data is where it already is.
Zero network egress
The binary makes no outbound connections. Verify it yourself with Wireshark or a host firewall in deny-all mode.
No vendor holds your PHI
Nothing is uploaded, so there is no processor agreement to negotiate and no third-party breach to disclose.
Node-locked licence
Your key is delivered at purchase and binds to one machine on first launch — activated fully offline, with no server call.
Works air-gapped
Install from media, scan an isolated forensic workstation, and carry the report out. No connectivity required, ever.
Compliance framing
Evidence an auditor will accept.
Findings are mapped to the obligations that drive the work: safeguarding personal health information, breach-risk assessment, and records of processing. VellumSoft produces the artifact; your programme supplies the judgement.
- PHIPA (ON)
- Law 25 (QC)
- PIPEDA
- HIPAA Security Rule
- US state privacy
VellumSoft is a discovery tool. It supports compliance work; it does not constitute legal advice or certification.
Auditor-ready PDF report
- Scan scope, timestamp, and operator identity
- Findings by data type, region, and confidence
- File-level locations for remediation
- Regulation mapping appendix
- SHA-256 hash of the report for integrity
Pricing
One product. Perpetual licence.
Buy the version you run. It keeps working after the term ends; updates are included for twelve months.
Solo
$399 / seat, perpetual
Consultants, solo practitioners, and small firms.
- Single node-locked seat
- Full detection coverage
- Findings masked (last 4 shown)
- Auditor PDF + CSV export
- 12 months of updates
Team / Operator
MULTI-SEAT$749 / seat, perpetual
Privacy offices, IR teams, and managed service providers.
- Multi-seat licensing, node-locked per machine
- Raw-value reveal for verification (masked by default)
- Encrypted results store (AES-256) with passphrase
- Folder and single-file scanning
- Priority email support
Ten seats or more, or a site licence? Contact us for volume and site licensing.
FAQ
Questions we get from privacy teams.
Know what is in your archives.
Install on one workstation, scan the mailbox everyone has been avoiding, and hand the report to your auditor.
Windows 10/11 · one-time purchase · no cloud, no telemetry