Certified Ethical Hacker (CEH)
Trained to think like an attacker, so FileFerret is built to withstand one. Security is designed in from the first line of code — never bolted on after.
About Curtilage
Built by someone who has spent a career protecting data that can’t leak.
Curtilage builds private, on-premises AI for firms that cannot hand confidential client material to a public cloud — built on one conviction: a firm should be able to use modern AI on its most sensitive files without ever handing them to anyone else.
Meet the Principal
Meet Charles Havranek.
Principal & Founder · Curtilage
Charles is a Certified Ethical Hacker with more than 30 years securing information that organizations cannot afford to expose — from a U.S. central bank under Public Trust clearance to Fortune 100 firms in heavily regulated industries. He founded Curtilage because the firms that would benefit most from AI — lawyers, CPAs, tax pros, defense contractors — are exactly the ones who can’t put their clients’ files in a public cloud.
So he builds the alternative: private AI delivered as an appliance Curtilage ships, installs, and supports, where your most sensitive material never leaves your network. Security isn’t a feature he bolts on at the end — it’s designed in from the first line of code.
Where he’s learned the ropes & consulted
Three decades inside the places that can’t afford to leak.
Roles held directly or as a consultant/contractor across government, finance, aerospace, insurance, energy, and retail — the proving ground for how Curtilage treats confidential data.
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JPMorgan Chase
- Federal Reserve Bank
- U.S. Treasury
- Raytheon
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NASA
- NOAA
- AmTrust
- Snap-on
- Home Instead
- BP / Amoco
- Sears
- Electronic Merchant Systems
Company and agency names are referenced to describe the principal’s professional experience and do not imply endorsement of Curtilage. All marks belong to their respective owners.
Who builds it
A security pedigree, not a startup’s guesswork.
Public Trust clearance
Held a U.S. Public Trust clearance while working with the nation’s central bank — handling information under some of the strictest custody and accountability standards there are.
Fortune 100 & regulated industries
Decades consulting for Fortune 100 organizations and highly regulated sectors, where a single data-handling mistake carries real legal, financial, and reputational weight.
30+ years in the field
More than three decades building and securing systems where confidentiality, accountability, and compliance are not optional — they are the job.
Backing the support promise
Experience that makes “supported” mean something.
Curtilage is shipped, installed, and supported — backed by a 30-year delivery career in support and operations, leadership, requirements, SLAs/SLOs, and change management.
Support & operations
Decades running IT operations and incident response in environments where downtime is measured in dollars — including automated cyber controls that saved $10M a year and cutting one application’s recovery time by 99.65% (15 days to 35 minutes). Support is something he has done firsthand, not outsourced.
Leadership & mentorship
A PMP since 2008 who plugs into established programs, improves them, and reports portfolio health, risk, and dependencies cleanly to CIOs and executive leadership — while mentoring fellow project managers and engineering leads.
Requirements & delivery
Routinely brought in to rescue stalled or backlogged initiatives: gather the missing requirements, rebuild the plan, and drive it to delivery with disciplined RAID tracking and stakeholder management.
SLAs, SLOs & accountability
Designs the SLA/SLO targets, OKRs/KPIs, roadmaps, and scorecards that make support measurable and accountable — so “supported” means commitments you can hold us to, not a vague promise.
Upgrades & change management
Plans and executes upgrades, migrations, and cutovers with freeze windows, go/no-go criteria, rollback checkpoints, and post-cutover validation — so updates land predictably and your system keeps working through them.
What we believe
Convictions we won’t compromise.
The principles every Curtilage product is built on — explored in full on our Our Ethos page.
Confidentiality is a duty, not a feature
Your clients trust you with their most sensitive material. Protecting it isn’t a checkbox we upsell — it is the entire reason this product exists.
Privacy should be architecture, not a promise
We don’t ask you to trust a vendor’s privacy policy. FileFerret keeps your files on the appliance we ship you, so privacy is a fact of how it is built — not a setting someone else can quietly change.
You should own your tools
No lock-in, no metering, no account a third party can suspend. We ship you the hardware and software and support it for years — it runs on your terms, at a cost you can predict.
AI must show its work
Answers cite their sources and every action is logged. AI used in serious, regulated work has to be accountable and verifiable — never a black box.
Responsible AI
When we build AI, we build it accountable.
“Responsible AI” isn’t a slogan here — it is how our AI products are built: private, accountable, and under the control of the professional responsible for the work.
Private by design
The AI runs entirely on your hardware. Your files are never sent to an outside service and never used to train anyone else’s model.
Cited and accountable
Every answer links back to the exact source it came from, and a complete audit log records who asked what — so nothing is taken on faith.
The professional stays in control
FileFerret assists judgment; it does not replace the person responsible for the work. The AI shows its work so you can verify it.
No hidden data use
Your clients’ material is never repurposed for training, marketing, or aggregation — because it never leaves your network in the first place.
Our solutions
What we ship today.
FileFerret
Law · Tax · CPA · RIA · defense
Private AI document search, shipped & supported.
Semantic search and cited answers across your firm’s documents, images, audio, and video — delivered as a turnkey appliance we ship, install, and support, with nothing ever leaving your network.
Explore FileFerret →Sensitive-Data Discovery
GLBA · FTC Safeguards · IRS 4557 · CMMC/CUI
Find your CUI before your assessor does.
Point it at your file shares and it shows where personally identifiable information, privileged material, and Controlled Unclassified Information markings actually live — a clear report of what’s where, so you can prove you know your data and bring the exposed material under control.
Explore Sensitive-Data Discovery →Modern software, kept inside your walls.
Tell us about your organization and the data you need to protect. We’ll help you put capable, modern tools to work on a private system we ship, install, and support — with nothing ever leaving your network.