Security
“Bank-level security” is a slogan. This page is the actual design: how accounts are separated, how access is controlled, and how every action stays visible. If you're evaluating a portal for your firm, these are the questions worth asking any vendor.
Firm staff and portal clients have independent accounts, sessions, and sign-in pages. A client login can never reach staff features, and a staff login never poses as a client. A person with businesses at two different firms uses one portal login and picks between them. Removing them from one firm never disturbs the other.
Staff accounts support two-factor authentication with recovery codes. Client accounts support it too, by authenticator app or email code. Magic links from request emails are one-time and still honor the second factor for anyone enrolled.
Each folder controls whether clients can see it and whether they can upload into it. Folders can additionally be secured to named staff with expiring access. Admins see every client; members see only clients they're assigned to.
Per-file shares name their recipients, can require login, and carry expiry dates. Resending a share rotates the recipient's access secret, so an old forwarded email stops working. Every share tracks how many times it was opened, first and last view.
Every meaningful action (uploaded, viewed, renamed, shared, deleted) is recorded permanently and shown in the product: each client has an activity timeline and each file its own history, with names and timestamps. Accountability is a tab in the product. Open a file's history and it is all there.
Files travel directly between the browser and encrypted object storage over TLS using short-lived, signed URLs, so file contents never pass through the application servers. Sensitive endpoints are rate-limited, and deleted files sit in a 30-day trash before purging, so an accident is recoverable and a purge is real.
The exit is part of the security
Vendor risk is a security question too. BrightReturn is billed monthly with no lock-in, and your firm's documents export as a zip whenever you want them. A vendor you can leave easily has to keep earning the relationship. We think that's the right incentive to be under.
Security review before the trial? Send your questionnaire through the contact page, or start the trial and inspect the access controls yourself.