TeamDrive
Compliant and Secure Cloud Collaboration Services

The past year has been a huge catalyst for the adoption and improvement of cloud collaboration tools, and it’s only expected for tech collaboration to grow in the coming years. At no other point in time has there ever been a greater need for the instant availability of IT resources and data enabled by the cloud than during this coronavirus pandemic. By transforming connectivity between people and businesses on a global scale, the cloud has fundamentally changed the old paradigm of collaboration with minimal infrastructure costs and excellent backup capabilities. While the benefits are aplenty, organisations cannot overlook the growing concerns around security and privacy and the need to fulfil regularity compliance and GDPR requirements when using cloud services. Only automatic end-to-end encryption guarantees full control and privacy. Nobody understands this better than TeamDrive Systems.

Established in 2008 as a spin-off from SNAP Innovation GmbH, TeamDrive empowers businesses with its highly secure cloud service for data storage and data exchange, which is end-to-end encrypted and GDPR certified. TeamDrive develops and markets collaboration software for an easy and secure collaboration over the internet.

Collaboration through the Lens of Security

TeamDrive’s solution is a secure sync and share solution for business owners and government organisations alike. The solution automatically monitors files and syncs any changes between users and their team members. “Many customers, like doctors, tax-advisors, lawyers and also teachers and priests are dealing with sensitive, confidential and personal information. TeamDrive allows these professionals to send, exchange and collaborate in privacy with their clients,” says Detlef Schmuck, CEO of TeamDrive. Customers can invite their clients into a shared space, or they can simply use our MS Outlook add-in to send encrypted attachments via email. The integrated audit trail provides full transparency of all activities and fulfils all compliance requirements.

Easy self-management, automatic file versioning and full audit trail in each Space (data room) make TeamDrive the collaboration solution of choice for all users who seek the highest level of security and privacy. The uniqueness of TeamDrive stems from its automatic, fully end-to-end encrypted collaboration services that eliminate unencrypted metadata and ensure all keys remain in the users’ hand. TeamDrive has developed zero-knowledge technology and infrastructure that guarantee requested privacy and provide as much comfort as possible to make the technology easy to use.

Hosted on servers in the EU under European Ownership and control, these services present customers with a choice to integrate their own directory services and combine on-premise or hybrid hosting services. Be it at the office using Windows, Linux or Mac computers or on the road using iOS or Android mobile devices, users have the utmost flexibility to sync with their team and access the latest files, even if they are offline. In fact, teams can simply download TeamDrive client, sync the data, and start collaborating in minutes. With modular architecture, unlimited scalability, and APIs for integration and automation, TeamDrive’s services empower customers with its externally audited solution with the European Privacy Seal, EuroPriSe.

One major advantage for TeamDrive is that it eliminates the use of a VPN network due to the fully end-to-end encrypted service out of the box. Teams are able to set up a secure collaboration space within minutes. It is easy to set up and intuitive to use without the need for expert support. “We saw a strong increase of new customers during the Covid-19 pandemic as a result of the required home-office use. Customers who used TeamDrive like cloud collaboration services before Covid-19 were lucky as they were able to work from home uninterrupted, fully secure and compliant,” adds Paul McCullagh, CTO, TeamDrive.

The Pursuit of Continued Excellence

Owing to its robust capabilities, TeamDrive has captured the attention of several small businesses across Europe. Small business, schools and non-profit organisations prefer TeamDrive for its ease of use and attractive pricing (free for non-commercial use). TeamDrive is recommended by the German Lawyer Association to its 76,000 lawyers to use encrypted cloud services to exchange and collaborate with each lawyer’s clients. In the healthcare market, TeamDrive is used to transmit highly secure certificates to vaccination centres, doctors, pharmacists, and public healthcare centres. This distribution process is fully automated. On the server where the certificates are issued, a process uses the local TeamDrive client´s API to generate encrypted data rooms for each receiving party. The invitation and authentication processes are all fully automated and fully documented in an audit trail. This solution shows how TeamDrive scales for thousands of users in independent network environments. During the COVID-19 pandemic, this service has proved instrumental in issuing certified vaccination documents.

TeamDrive currently has more than 550,000 users who are using the TeamDrive client software. Apart from online sales via the TeamDrive online shop, TeamDrive actively works with a reseller and partner network throughout Europe. TeamDrive also licenses its technology to other companies as private label or OEM versions. The company currently houses a development team of 10 developers in Hamburg and a small development team near Vancouver, Canada.
“We see that end-to-end encrypted services will grow into many other segments beyond just the document collaboration space. As we see from the Covid-19 certification distribution project, fully automated services supported by an easy and unlimited scalable encrypted cloud service will grow in its importance as digitalisation evolves,” notes Schmuck. Also, the strong growth of unencrypted cloud Services like MS Teams and OneDrive will open opportunities of a growing need to provide encryption extensions. “Our Cloud Services are used worldwide but with a strong sales focus on Europe, at the moment. The reasons being the GDPR requirements which are a strong reason for European companies to choose a local service. Our plan is to work with partners or OEMs for international markets,” says Schmuck.

Using the available APIs, the TeamDrive technology is growing towards providing a secure transportation layer for the internet of things (IoT) and machine learning collaboration. This is part of the larger set of services that this dynamic and innovative company aims to deliver in the future.