The Basics
What is SecretShield?
SecretShield is an app that lets you take sensitive information and securely store it with the help of your friends and family. When you need it back, you request to recover it in the app and they will get a request to verify its really you and approve. Once approved, your app can reconstruct the secret.
Your friends hand family do not hold the secret. Instead they are issued shares of data that are only useful when combined.
How long does it take to set up SecretShield?
A few minutes. First, create your account, then invite contacts. Once your contacts are on the platform, create your first secret, and add guardians from your contacts. You’re done!
What types of data can SecretShield support?
SecretShield supports small pieces of data like seed phrases, mnemonics, master passwords, break-glass accounts, confidential information, trade secrets, executor instructions, and small file attachments.
SecretShield is not designed to support videos, images, or larger files. We would suggest encrypting and storing such securely on a backed up platform and then placing the password, key, or similar to decrypt that data in SecretShield.
Why not store the data as an Encrypted Local File?
This may seem secure; however, there are many risks. The data is susceptible to exfiltration (being copied, emailed, uploaded off the computer). Also, the storage on the computer could fail resulting in losing the data. Unfortunately, Backups of the data become attack targets too if the backup is online or in the cloud.
Password protecting the file is better than nothing. Encrypting a file like a Word or Excel is susceptible to cracking software readily available for download on the Internet. It's especially risky when combined with the exfiltration risk. Even Microsoft says: "You should not assume that just because you protect a workbook or worksheet with a password that it is secure..."
How is SecretShield different from Multisig social recovery?
Multisig allows signing with a new key if you lose access to your old key. SecretShield lets you fully recover the original data, including master passwords, wills, and seed phrases, which is not possible with Multisig.
Secret Shield vs MFA: What’s the difference?
MFA such as 2FA and 3FA verifies your identity using multiple factors. SecretShield will use multiple parties to recover or reconstruct the saved sensitive data. As such, MFA provides authentication while SecretShield provides data recovery.