DKAP-14-COMPRESS SEC Rule 17a-4 (long-term retention) Basic Tier

D-KaP Compress

D-KaP Compress — the EpochCore product that shrinks long-term record archives without breaking their cryptographic seal — means that when you decompress a bundle five years from now, the signature still verifies and the regulator still accepts it. It is part of EpochCore's sealed-evidence product line.

The problem

Long-term retention rules — SEC 17a-4 in particular — require firms to keep records for years. The records pile up. To control storage costs, teams compress them. The trouble is that conventional zip-and-archive workflows break the original seal: when you decompress, the bytes can be subtly different, and the cryptographic signature no longer matches. The auditor then asks "how do I know these records weren't altered in storage?" and you have no good answer.

What this product is

D-KaP Compress is purpose-built for long-term sealed retention. You hand it a bundle of records and it produces one compact archive. The archive carries the same three-signature seal as the original, anchored to the EpochCore root certificate. Years later, anyone — you, your auditor, a regulator — can decompress it and the cryptographic seal still verifies. No re-signing, no chain-of-custody gap, no awkward conversation with the auditor.

It is the difference between "we believe these are the originals" and "here is mathematical proof these are the originals." The second one closes audits faster.

Who it is for

What you get when you buy

Compressed sealed archive
One bundle file (binary), retained in our write-once store for at least 7 years; downloadable any time.
Triple cryptographic signature
Survives compression and decompression intact; verifies the same way the original did.
Verifier command-line tool
Cross-platform binary your auditor can run offline to confirm the archive matches the seal.
Manifest + cover sheet
Plain-text manifest listing every file inside, plus a signed PDF cover sheet for the auditor's working papers.

How to use it — 3 steps

  1. Submit your record bundle

    Send your already-signed records to POST /compress. These can be SEC 17a-4 trade records, supervisory reviews, communications, anything you have already sealed with one of our other products (or any other system that produces a verifiable hash).

  2. Store the returned bundle

    You get back one compact binary file. Put it wherever your retention policy says — cloud cold storage, an on-prem archive, a vendor records-management system. We also keep a write-once copy on our side as a redundancy.

  3. Verify on demand, even years later

    When the auditor or regulator asks for the records, decompress with the verifier tool. The tool checks every signature in one pass and prints "VERIFIED" along with the original sealing timestamp. Hand that printout to the auditor along with the records.

What it looks like in practice

Example: An RIA has six years of supervisory-review records stored in a vendor archive that is being shut down. Re-keying every record by hand is unthinkable. They run the full set through D-KaP Compress, get one bundle, hand it to the new archive vendor, and run the verifier in front of the auditor on the next exam. Every record verifies. The auditor signs off on the migration in a single session.

The value flow

Records In → Compressed Archive → Verifiable Years Later Your records (17a-4 trades, reviews, comms) Compress bundles & re-seals Sealed bundle (binary + verifier tool) Years later: VERIFIED decompress, run verifier, hand result to regulator Storage costs drop, integrity stays. The seal survives compression and time.

Why $29 is the right price

A single SEC 17a-4 deficiency citation can cost a registered firm thousands in remediation, plus the soft cost of an auditor's lost confidence. $29 to remove "evidence of integrity at rest" from your control-gaps list is, on any reasonable accounting, the cheapest line on a compliance budget.

Pricing

Base product (one sealed bundle) $29
+ Watermarked evidence bundle +$20

Want the watermarked evidence bundle? (+$20)

Adds an invisible watermark to the auditor-facing PDF cover sheet that ships alongside the compressed archive. The watermark stays attached through screenshots, re-uploads, and ordinary compression. We measured it against 136 attack vectors and it survived 90 of them with zero false positives, at an image quality of 0.985 of 1.0 (invisible to the eye). MEASURED

Particularly useful for records-management teams whose archives circulate across multiple custodians over the retention period — you can prove, years later, which copy of the cover sheet originated from your firm. Not "uncopyable" — a determined attacker can still strip a header — but tamper-evident in every way that matters to an auditor reviewing chain-of-custody.

Buy Compress — $29 + Watermarked Bundle ($49)