Question 1

What is ASTIS, exactly?

Accepted Answer

ASTIS is a cryptographic trust layer for business data. It encrypts, signs, applies format-preserving encryption, and audits sensitive data without sending business-payload plaintext to ASTIS, cloud providers, or AI tools. You can use it as a ready-made secure workspace (ASTIS Mail) or integrate it into your own apps via the API platform (ASTIS API and ASTIS HYOK CVS).

Question 2

Should I buy ASTIS Mail or the ASTIS API platform?

Accepted Answer

Mail if your team needs an encrypted workspace for sensitive client, patient, employee, or legal communications without engineering work. API platform if you have engineering capacity and want to embed encryption, signing, format-preserving encryption, or audit into your own product or data pipeline. Many regulated organizations buy both.

Question 3

How does ASTIS Mail work alongside Gmail or Outlook?

Accepted Answer

Mail is a standalone secure workspace with its own mailbox. It optionally integrates with Gmail and Outlook so you can route sensitive threads through ASTIS while keeping your existing inbox for non-sensitive mail.

Question 4

What is the difference between BYOK and HYOK?

Accepted Answer

BYOK (Bring Your Own Key) describes customer-held keys — at ASTIS these are provided through HYOK. Under ASTIS-Managed custody, ASTIS holds the key as sealed material and processes it transiently during operations such as key rewrap (honest policy-trust). HYOK (Hold Your Own Key) means the key never leaves your infrastructure and ASTIS never sees it. Managed API tiers (Pro, Business) use ASTIS-Managed custody; full HYOK is available on API Enterprise and ASTIS HYOK CVS.

Question 5

How is API pricing structured?

Accepted Answer

ASTIS API is sold as an annual feature-gated platform license. Pricing is by tier (Pro, Business, Enterprise, Strategic) — an annual license, not per-call billing. Each tier comes with rate limits and capacity sized to the plan; substantial usage growth triggers a tier-upgrade conversation.

Question 6

What rate limits or abuse protections apply to free developer access?

Accepted Answer

Free developer access is a 30-day evaluation trial with 10,000 requests / month, sandbox access only. Runs on production-grade infrastructure with conservative per-second rate limits, burst caps, and abuse-protection caps. Sustained abusive traffic, credential stuffing, or DDoS-pattern requests trigger account suspension. After 30 days organizations convert to a paid annual license through sales (production tiers from $15,000/year).

Question 7

What is ASTIS HYOK CVS and how does it differ from API Strategic?

Accepted Answer

ASTIS HYOK CVS is a separate self-hosted deployment of the CryptoVault Service ($50,000–$250,000+/year) for organizations needing on-premises CVS. API Strategic ($1M+/year) is the top tier of the managed platform with dedicated cluster, source escrow, custom SLA, and on-call engineering. Different deployment models, different price bands.

Question 8

Is there a free trial?

Accepted Answer

Yes for both products. Mail Free Trial gives a 30-day evaluation of the secure workspace with one mailbox; after the trial it becomes read-only unless upgraded. The API platform offers free developer access — create an evaluation organization in Portal, generate an API key, and start integrating. Developer access runs on production-grade infrastructure with fair-use rate limits and no SLA, and is not intended for regulated production workloads. Production API licenses are annual, feature-gated, and start at $15,000/year.

Question 9

Can pricing, rate limits, or SLA terms change?

Accepted Answer

Yes. Pricing, tier features, rate-limit numbers, abuse-protection caps, and SLA terms may evolve. Existing customers are honored under their current contract until renewal; changes apply at renewal with prior notice (typically 90 days for paid tiers). Free developer access limits may change as part of operational capacity management. Material changes are reflected on this page and in the Terms of Service.

Question 10

What happens to my data if I cancel?

Accepted Answer

Mail subscribers retain access to encrypted messages through the data retention period and can export keys and messages before cancellation. API customers retain access to their audit chain, signed records, and encrypted data through their contract end date with a 30-day post-cancellation export window. Encryption keys remain under customer control throughout.

Question 11

How does ASTIS help with GDPR, HIPAA, NIS2, DORA, and the EU AI Act?

Accepted Answer

ASTIS is designed to support compliance-heavy workflows — customer-controlled keys, tamper-evident audit evidence, data-retention controls, and an EU/EEA data plane. For AI workflows, keeping business-payload plaintext out of LLMs and third-party models supports EU AI Act data-governance and GDPR data-minimisation. ASTIS is not itself a compliance certification: CASA Tier 2 is complete and SOC 2 Type II is in progress. For US healthcare, ASTIS is HIPAA-aligned by architecture (PHI never crosses the ASTIS edge under HYOK) and a BAA is available for Enterprise and HYOK CVS deployments. Mail Enterprise and API Business+ include compliance documentation, vendor-risk support, and audit-evidence export.

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