Remove metadata and redact documents, securely on your own workstation
Verilak removes hidden data from your files, converts them to PDF/A and redacts personal data so it is truly gone. Built for government bodies that publish documents. No internet, no account.
A file tells more than you think
Whoever shares or publishes a document often shares data nobody meant to share. It is not on the screen, but it is in the file. In a disclosure under the Dutch Open Government Act (Woo), that can mean a data breach.
Author and organisation
Names of staff, the department and the company the software was registered to.
Changes and comments
Tracked changes, comments in the margin and earlier versions of the text.
Location in photos
GPS coordinates, the phone model and the moment the photo was taken.
Hidden content
Hidden sheets, slides and layers, and text under a black bar that can still simply be copied.
Three tasks in one application
Clean
Verilak removes metadata from PDF, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OpenDocument, photos, audio, video, email and archives. Every result is then checked again, independently.
Convert to PDF/A
Turn an Office document into a clean PDF, a PDF/A for the archive or an accessible PDF/UA. Every PDF is validated with veraPDF.
Redact
Verilak proposes what to redact. You decide on every proposal and choose the legal ground. The text under the box is then really gone.
How it works
Drop your files
One file or a whole folder. Verilak determines the real file type itself, even when the extension is wrong.
Choose a profile
For example the Woo profile. The profile decides what must go and what may stay, such as the orientation of a photo.
Check the result
Every file shows green or red, with a before and after comparison and a report. The original stays where it is.
Built never to report a file as clean by mistake
- Clean only after verification. A file is clean only after cleaning and an independent second check with a separate parser.
- Unknown means blocked. What Verilak cannot process safely is reported in red. It never slips through.
- Fully offline. No cloud, no account. Every file is processed in an isolated process without network access.
- Auditable. An audit log with a hash chain, exportable as PDF/A, shows what happened to every file.
- No content in log files. Verilak never writes the content or metadata values of your documents to disk.
- Accessible. Usable with keyboard and screen reader, in Dutch and English.
Who is Verilak for?
Government
Municipalities, provinces, water authorities and central government that handle Woo requests and publish proactively.
Legal sector
Lawyers, courts and legal departments that share case files and documents externally.
Healthcare
Care organisations that must share documents with sensitive data without unnecessary personal data.
Businesses
Organisations that send out quotes, reports and photos and do not want to leak internal data.
All common file types
PDF, Word, Excel, PowerPoint and their older versions, OpenDocument, JPEG, PNG, HEIC, TIFF, SVG, MP3, MP4, MOV, email (.eml and .msg), ZIP and 7z, and more. Files inside files, such as a photo in a Word document or an attachment in an email, are cleaned as well.
Frequently asked questions
What is metadata and why should I remove it?
Metadata is data about a file that you do not see directly: the author, the organisation, comments, tracked changes, earlier versions, the printer, folders on your computer and, for photos, the GPS location. When you share or publish a file, that data goes along. Names of staff or internal considerations that were never meant for publication can get out that way.
Is the text under a black box really gone?
Yes. Many redaction mistakes happen because a black bar is only placed over the text, while the text underneath can still be copied. Verilak turns a redacted page into an image, so nothing is left under the box. A separate check then searches whether the redacted text still appears anywhere in the file. After that, Verilak makes the text around the box searchable again with OCR.
Does Verilak work without internet?
Yes. Verilak runs entirely on your own workstation. No account, no cloud and no connection to the supplier is needed. Every file is processed in a separate, isolated process without network access.
What happens to a file that Verilak cannot clean safely?
That file is blocked and reported in red, with the reason. Verilak only releases a file as clean after cleaning and an independent second check. An unknown or unsupported file never passes as clean by mistake.
Try Verilak in your own organisation
A six week pilot on your own workstations, with your own documents. We never see those documents. The only cost is the time of the participants.