TeamDrive is the winner of
the DC Cloud Sync&Share Services report 2017 of the Diplomatic Council
(DC), a global think tank in consultative status with the United Nations.
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| Volker Oboda, Detlef Schmuck and Hang Nguyen Diplomatic Council |
The report was compiled due
to a growing demand for an impartial comparison of IT services that offer a
secure and reliable means of exchanging data over the internet (the cloud). In
particular, the apparent “rampant activities of the intelligence services”, the
rise in cybercrime including industrial espionage, and the legal uncertainty
surrounding some global data protection regulations have resulted in increasing
requests for us to recommend individual services. According to the report, the German-based
service TeamDrive is the most secure services.
Three security criteria
Widely-used alternatives
from US suppliers, such as Dropbox, Box, Google Drive or Microsoft One Drive,
are expressly not recommended, because, according to the report, they “do not
support significant security criteria such as end-to-end encryption, a zero
knowledge system and hybrid data storage”. The Global Information Security
Forum of the Diplomatic Council classifies these three security characteristics
as particularly significant. End-to-end encryption ensures that data is not
left unencrypted either during transfers or when stored on the Internet. A zero
knowledge system means that even the supplier cannot decrypt the data and
therefore cannot read it – not even if required to do so by a court order, for
example. Hybrid data storage means that the user can choose the place of
storage and apply additional classifications. Redundant storage and
unchangeable version control ensure that no data is lost either through technical
failures or as a result of attacks via the Internet. The relevant data can
always be restored. The think tank’s report describes hybrid data storage as a
“crucial criterion for selecting a cloud-based sync & share service”, in
order to ensure that, even if data is lost in the cloud, this data still
exists.
12 services compared
In total, the Diplomatic
Council examined twelve cloud-based sync & share services for its
investigation: Dropbox, Box, Google Drive, Microsoft One Drive for business,
Spider Oak, Syncplicity, TeamDrive, SSP Europe, Telekom MagentaCloud, Strato
HiDrive, Ctera Portal and Tresorit. As well as being the most secure services
according to the report, TeamDrive and Secure Data Space are also credited by
the think tank’s Global Information Security Forum for being the only service
to receive the ULD Data Protection Seal of Approval from the Independent State
Center for Data Protection. TeamDrive is the only service recommended by the
German Lawyers Association (DAV) for professionals with confidentiality
obligations, such as attorneys and notaries. In the opinion of the Security
Forum of the Diplomatic Council, a service that meets this high standard is
also worth recommending for industrial use.
Dr. Thomas Lapp, Chairman of
the Global Information Security Forum of the Diplomatic Council says: “One
would hope that the operators of all the services recognize the security
defects in their services immediately and remedy them as swiftly as possible. A
high level of security is in the interests of all stakeholders.”
