🇫🇷 Public sector
Secure file sharing for the public sector and local authorities
Send administrative documents and sensitive files to citizens, partners and other departments without leaving a trace. End-to-end encryption, hosting in France, files that self-destruct.
The problem: an agent sending a document usually only has their inbox
A processing department needs to send a decision to a citizen. An HR officer sends a payslip. A procurement team exchanges documents with a contractor. In most cases, it ends up as an email attachment, or on a consumer service hosted in the United States where nobody really knows where the files go.
Email is not end-to-end encrypted, stays in both inboxes indefinitely, and travels through servers the authority has no control over. Consumer transfer services keep the files, track usage, and often host data outside Europe. For a public body bound by GDPR and a duty to protect its citizens’ data, both options are a real problem.
Pli Scellé answers exactly that need: a secure, encrypted link that expires, hosted in France, with no account required for the recipient.
Zero-knowledge encryption: even we cannot read your files
In end-to-end (E2E) mode, the file is encrypted in the agent's browser, using AES-256-GCM, before anything is sent. The decryption key stays in the URL fragment, the part after the hash, which browsers never send to the server. In practice: our servers receive and store only encrypted data they are unable to decrypt. Pli Scellé cannot read your files. SHPV France, the publisher, cannot either.
This is fundamentally different from a classic host that holds the keys. Here, confidentiality does not rest on a contractual promise: it is guaranteed by cryptography. The recipient opens the full link, their browser retrieves the key from the fragment and decrypts locally. At no point does the plaintext touch our infrastructure.
Hosted in France, data that never leaves the EU
All files are hosted exclusively in datacenters located in metropolitan France. No transfer outside the European Union, therefore no exposure to extraterritorial laws such as the US CLOUD Act, which French public doctrine treats as a risk even when the physical hosting is in Europe. The publisher, SHPV France SAS, is a French company.
A point of honesty, because it matters to a public buyer. Pli Scellé is not SecNumCloud qualified and not ISO 27001 certified. The ANSSI SecNumCloud qualification is the expected marker for « sensitive data » in the sense of article 31 of the SREN law of 21 May 2024: secrets protected by law, data touching national security or public order. If your need falls into that regulated category, you need a SecNumCloud qualified provider, and we will tell you so plainly.
Where Pli Scellé fits is the daily non-classified flow: the bulk of routine exchanges between a department and a citizen, between two departments, with a contractor. For those uses, sovereign hosting in France, GDPR respected by design and zero-knowledge encryption meet the protection requirement without the weight of a classified environment.
Ephemeral by default: nothing remains, so nothing leaks later
Every share carries an expiry date, from one hour to thirty days depending on the plan. After that, the file is purged automatically and permanently. No copy is kept. This logic matches the GDPR principles of minimisation and storage limitation: data you do not keep is data that cannot leak in a future incident.
Before delivery, unencrypted files are scanned by the ClamAV antivirus. No marketing tracker is placed on share pages. Anonymous sharing lets you send a short text, view-once, that disappears after 24 hours, handy for passing a temporary identifier or password.
Concrete use cases in a local authority
Send a document to a citizen
A department sends a decision, a certificate, an acknowledgement or a civil status document. The recipient gets a link, downloads it, the file expires. No account needed on the citizen's side.
Receive documents without an account
Receive links let a citizen or contractor drop a file to you through a link you send, with no sign-up on their part. The upload arrives encrypted on the Pli Scellé side.
Inter-department exchanges
An HR department sends payroll items to accounting, a legal department shares a case file with senior management. The link expires, the audit log records who shared what.
Public procurement and external contractors
Send tender documents to a successful bidder, or receive deliverables from a contractor, without an inbox keeping everything. IP address restrictions available on the Pro plan.
Sending sensitive non-classified documents
For a confidential document that does not fall under legally protected secrecy, E2E mode guarantees that only the recipient holding the full link can read it, not even our servers.
Access security and traceability for agents
On agent accounts, two-factor authentication via app (TOTP) and WebAuthn passkeys protect access. SSO/SAML is available from the Essential plan to connect Pli Scellé to the authority's directory, and SCIM 2.0 provisioning from the Pro plan to automate account creation and removal as agents arrive and leave.
Audit logs keep the history of actions, 30 days on the Essential plan, 90 days on the Pro plan. The Pro plan adds IP address restriction and geographic restrictions, useful to limit access to the authority's network.
Frequently asked questions
- Is Pli Scellé SecNumCloud qualified?
- No. Pli Scellé is neither SecNumCloud qualified nor ISO 27001 certified. The ANSSI SecNumCloud qualification is required for « sensitive data » in the regulatory sense (secrets protected by law, national security, public order), governed by article 31 of the SREN law. For those uses you need a qualified provider. Pli Scellé serves the daily non-classified flow, with sovereign hosting in France and zero-knowledge encryption.
- Where is the data hosted?
- Exclusively in datacenters located in metropolitan France. No transfer outside the European Union. The publisher, SHPV France SAS, is a French company. No exposure to extraterritorial laws such as the CLOUD Act.
- How do you guarantee you cannot read our files?
- In E2E mode, AES-256-GCM encryption happens in the browser before sending. The key stays in the URL fragment, never sent to the server. Our servers only store encrypted content they cannot decrypt. This is guaranteed by cryptography, not by a contract clause.
- Does a citizen need an account to receive a file?
- No. The recipient gets a link and downloads directly, no sign-up. The other way round, receive links let them drop a file to you through a link, again without creating an account.
- What happens to files after sharing?
- Every share expires between one hour and thirty days depending on the plan, then the file is purged automatically and permanently. No copy is kept, which matches the GDPR storage limitation principle.