This documentation is for 2.16.x versions of the Covata Platform.

Please refer to our important notice for information that relates to this documentation.

Overview of the Covata Platform and its API

Covata provides a complete solution and platform for securely protecting and sharing encrypted files and folders which can be stored and accessed anywhere (within an organization, outside the domain and from mobile devices).

Covata's technologies provide this solution through the Covata Platform, whose Access Service centrally manages cryptographic keys (used to encrypt/decrypt content) and access controls (which define who can access/decrypt content and when).

The Covata Platform also consists of a separate Content Service, which handles the upload/download of encrypted content to and from an S3-compatible storage provider, server-side cryptography in situations where a zero-footprint (e.g. web browser-based) solution is required for sharing content.

This separation between the roles of the Covata Platform's Access and Content Services helps ensure that regardless of whether or not encrypted content gets into the wrong hands, it can only be decrypted by the people it's intended for.

Users of Covata technologies can share their secured content with others through Covata's Safe Share applications. However, the Covata Platform also provides an Application Programming Interface (API) ^* to provide integrators with the ability to develop their own applications or solutions that leverage Covata's powerful data-centric security features.

This documentation consists of a Getting Started Guide to provide integrators with instructions on how to get set up and begin using the Covata Platform's API as well as the API Reference Guide, which describes each API endpoint exposed through the Covata Platform.

^* Notes:

The Covata Platform's API (also known as Covata's API or simply the Covata API):

provides a range of endpoints, each of which is analogous to one or more methods on an object (in object-oriented programming), offering integrators the means to interact with the Covata Platform at the source-code level
and

is accessed through a secured Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTPS) connection.

For more information about administering the Covata Platform (which can also be performed through the Covata API), see the Covata Platform Administrator's Guide.