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Building a Zero-Trust, GDPR-Compliant Document Vault in Rust

Client Overview

  • 🔹Client: Confidential (European Financial Services Conglomerate)
  • 🔹Industry: Financial Services, Legal Compliance
  • 🔹Engagement Duration: 14 Months
  • 🔹Team Deployed: 12 Rust Engineers, 2 Security Architects, 1 Compliance Officer
  • 🔹Region: EU (Operating across Germany, France, and the Netherlands)
  •  

Objectives

  • 🔹Design a zero-trust document storage platform for storing and sharing high-sensitivity financial/legal documents.
  • 🔹Ensure full compliance with GDPR, ISO/IEC 27001, and internal regulatory frameworks.
  • 🔹Enable multi-party access control with cryptographic guarantees.
  • 🔹Provide an immutable audit trail for every document action without sacrificing privacy.
  • 🔹Future-proof the architecture with modular, blockchain-ready audit logging.

Solution

    • TechSteck Solutions developed a Rust-based document vault system from the ground up, leveraging cutting-edge cryptographic libraries and blockchain integrations to ensure end-to-end privacy, immutability, and access control.

    • Key Modules & Architecture

    •  

    •  1. Encrypted File Storage (Rust-Native)

      • 🔹Libraries Used: age, ring, and rust-crypto
      • 🔹Implementation Highlights:Files are encrypted client-side using ephemeral keys derived via X25519 ECDH exchange.
        • 🔹Keys are never stored on the server — enforcing zero-trust.
        • 🔹Encrypted shards are stored across multiple storage nodes with checksum validation.

      2. Multi-Party Access Control with ZK-Proofs

      • 🔹ZK Framework: arkworks-rs for lightweight ZK circuits
      • Features:
        • 🔹Users prove authorization using Zero-Knowledge Membership Proofs without revealing roles or identity.
        • 🔹Role-bound access is enforced at the API and storage layer.
        • 🔹Multi-sig-style approval for sensitive document actions (e.g., deletion, migration).

      3. Tamper-Proof Audit Logging

      • 🔹Immutable Logs:Every action (upload, view, access request, share) is hashed and written to a Merkle tree ledger.
        • 🔹Optionally backed by Hyperledger Fabric or a Substrate-based private chain.

🔹GDPR Alignment: Right to be forgotten” is cryptographically enforced by erasing key shares, rendering the document unrecoverable.

 4. System Integrations

  • 🔹Support for OIDC / SAML-based SSO for enterprise identity management.Secure REST APIs & gRPC interfaces for:
  • 🔹Banking document management systems
  • 🔹Enterprise ERP and DMS tools
  • 🔹Legal CRM tools

Implementation Highlights

 

Phase

Description

1. Requirements & Threat Modeling

Security architecture aligned with GDPR and enterprise threat surfaces.

2. Vault Core in Rust

Designed async, thread-safe backend using tokio and actix.

3. Crypto Layer

Built custom ZK circuits and key management logic using ring and arkworks.

4. Audit Chain

Pluggable Merkle-chain log; deployed both off-chain & with Substrate.

5. User Training & Compliance Testing

Internal security team workshops and regulator sandbox testing.

Outcomes

  • 🔹99.9% Reduction in unauthorized access attempts due to zero-trust access gates.
      • 🔹Passed GDPR and ISO 27001 audits with zero security non-conformities.
      • 🔹40% Reduction in document access time with concurrent streaming + caching.

      • 🔹 100% of sensitive data encrypted at rest and in transit with no server-side decryption.

Lessons Learned

    • 🔹ZK Proofs in Production Require Careful Design: Balancing proof complexity with real-time access performance is crucial.
    • 🔹Rust’s Type System Prevents Entire Classes of Bugs: Memory safety and performance were never compromised.

    🔹Education Is Key: End-user and enterprise IT training was vital to ensure adoption without resistance.

Conclusion

    • By leveraging Rust’s performance and safety guarantees along with advanced cryptography, TechSteck Solutions delivered a next-gen Document Vault platform that redefines enterprise data security. The client now operates with unmatched confidence in the integrity, privacy, and compliance of their digital asset lifecycle

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