01 Phase
Encrypt & Fragment
Per-transfer ephemeral keys. Erasure-coded shards.
- Fresh ephemeral key per transfer, standards-based AEAD
- Erasure-coded across distributed shards
- No single shard is useful on its own
Pilot-grade runtime · 100 TB/month capacity
BHTN Technologies Inc. The data architecture with nothing at rest to breach.
ZeRDA replaces the storage layer with a motion-first runtime. Data is encrypted, fragmented, routed through four independent planes, and reassembled only in the authorized client's memory — then byte-wiped.
01 Measured performance
Validated on the live pipeline, not projected.
Results from end-to-end runs on our dev-sdk environment — not simulations, not isolated crypto benchmarks. The full zero-residency security stack runs at speeds enterprises already expect from their fastest transfer tooling, and scales into enterprise-bandwidth deployments.
Sub-second
Class end-to-end latency
Enterprise
Grade sustained throughput
Large file
End-to-end transfer verified
19/19
STRIDE mitigated
Cost · 100 TB / month
$1,054 vs Aspera $5–15K/mo
Same volume. Zero residency BHTN alone guarantees. Full comparison — AWS Transfer Family, S3+KMS, Signiant — below.
Compared to Aspera
5–14× cheaper
at the same 100 TB/mo volume
Show full comparison table Hide full comparison table →
| Solution | Monthly cost | Data residency |
|---|---|---|
| BHTN ZeRDA | $1,054/mo | Zero |
| AWS Transfer Family | ~$5,200/mo | At rest |
| S3 + KMS | ~$2,500/mo | At rest |
| Aspera | $5–15K/mo | At rest |
| Signiant | $3–8K/mo | At rest |
BHTN cost: measured AWS services (US-East) + license. Competitor costs: published pricing where available.
01b A different category
Built for payloads the messaging generation can't carry.
Signal and its peers were built to move chat. ZeRDA was built to move the data that runs a regulated business — without any of it landing at rest along the way.
Messaging-era
Signal
Attachments cap around 100 MB per message. Ciphertext and delivery metadata persist on central servers — subpoena-able, breach-exposable.
Consumer-scale
Larger attachments, but stored in cloud infrastructure during delivery. Metadata persistent. Not built for regulated workflows or post-TTL irrecoverability.
BHTN ZeRDA
Motion-only, large-file validated
Multi-hundred-megabyte transfers validated end-to-end. Nothing persists — no ciphertext on servers, no delivery logs to subpoena. After TTL, the data is architecturally irrecoverable.
Signal attachment cap per official documentation. ZeRDA transfer validated on our dev-sdk environment — see measured performance above.
03 How ZeRDA works
Six steps. No data at rest between any of them.
Every transfer walks the same pipeline. Every phase is architecturally enforced — not policy-enforced.
02 Phase
Distribute
Gossip mesh of ephemeral nodes. Memory only — never disk.
- Redundant routing across ephemeral infrastructure
- Bulk path for payload, critical mesh for shards
- Zero persistent logs by default
03 Phase
Authorize
Time-bound grant tokens; per-transfer keys under hybrid post-quantum wrap.
- Four independent planes: Bulk · Critical · Metadata · Key-Custody
- Separate mTLS identities per plane
- No single plane can reconstruct alone
04 Phase
Reassemble
Shards combined under one grant in volatile memory. Plaintext exists only in memory, never on disk.
- k-of-n erasure decode in RAM
- Authenticated decryption on the authorized client
- No intermediate buffers on persistent media
05 Phase
Utilize
Application or user consumes the data. Plaintext lifetime measured in milliseconds.
- Plaintext handed to the consuming application
- Window measured in milliseconds
- Intermediate buffers byte-wiped on consumption
06 Phase
Re-encrypt & Destroy
New keys, new fragments, new locations. Original ciphertext and its location markers are cryptographically destroyed.
- Original keys destroyed, envelope evicted from custody
- Location markers and routing hints purged
- Data is architecturally irrecoverable after TTL
04 Architectural guarantees
What makes ZeRDA different.
Most security products add layers on top of vulnerable architecture. ZeRDA replaces the architecture itself. Every property is enforced by system design — not policy or access control.
01
Zero Residency
Not encryption-at-rest — there is no rest. Data never exists on disk, cache, or persistent storage. Services run on ephemeral compute — no block storage, no object storage, no persistent volumes.
02
Structural Separation
Payload, redundancy shards, reassembly layout, and key custody travel four independent planes, each with separate mTLS identity and network path. Compromise of any single plane yields nothing usable.
03
Time-Bound & Irreversible
Grant tokens with cryptographic expiry. TTL is fail-closed — no grace period, no override. Expiration is permanent destruction, no recovery mechanism.
04
Post-Quantum Key Wrap
Per-transfer keys are wrapped under a hybrid post-quantum construction — a lattice KEM combined with an elliptic-curve exchange. A captured envelope stays unrecoverable even against a future break of classical cryptography. After use, keys are byte-wiped and fragments purged.
05
Provable Compliance
19/19 STRIDE threat scenarios mitigated and tested. Machine-verifiable architectural proofs — not audit assertions. Compliance evidence built into every transfer.
06
Motion-Only Architecture
Data only exists as it moves. No staging, no warehousing, no intermediate copies. The at-rest attack surface is eliminated — not protected.
05 Where it fits
Built for regulated, high-stakes data movement.
The first design point is financial services, but the architecture applies wherever sensitive data needs to move without creating new custodians.
01 Financial services
Bank-to-processor settlement & real-time payment rails
ACH batches, wire confirmations, reconciliation dumps. Typical transfer profile: 3.3 TB/day, 100 TB/month with burst capacity. Zero residency satisfies PCI-DSS scope reduction.
02 Regulated exchange
Managed file transfer replacement
Drop-in replacement for SFTP, MFT platforms, and S3 pre-signed URLs. Same workflow for senders and receivers. Architectural elimination of the staging bucket problem.
03 Critical infrastructure
Cross-partner data exchange & compliance scope reduction
Move sensitive data between partners without creating new custodians. PCI, HIPAA, and SOX audit scope shrinks when the intermediate infrastructure is architecturally out of scope.
06 Products
The pipeline, and what we build on top of it.
Primary product
ZeRDA Pipeline
The licensed runtime. Deployed in your AWS account via infrastructure-as-code, managed through our portal SaaS. A modular runtime across four independent planes, zero data at rest.
4 planes Terraform-deployed Portal SaaS Air-gap supported
First-party client
ZEN-D
ZeRDA Encrypted Network Dialogue
A zero-residency secure messenger. Four-plane architecture, dual-layer encryption, fail-closed TTL — built for threat models Signal and WhatsApp were never designed for.
Get started
Ready to talk?
We're actively engaging with pilots in financial services, regulated exchange, and critical infrastructure. Book a technical briefing or request the evaluation benchmarks.