We proudly announce the appointment of Juan Perea Rodríguez as General Manager and Chief Commercial Officer. With this addition to the top management, Wire reaffirms its strategic focus on business in the public sector and with regulated companies, especially critical infrastructure providers.

“Juan Perea Rodríguez is an inspiring leader with outstanding credentials in business development and corporate development,” said Alan Duric, Cofounder and CTO of Wire. “Wire’s strategic growth will be greatly facilitated by Juan’s IT industry experience, expansive network, and inclusive, value-driven leadership approach.”

Prior to joining Wire, Juan Perea Rodríguez worked for the Japanese IT company Fujitsu for more than 20 years, where he was most recently responsible for the business in Central Europe as Managing Director and Head of Sales, Consulting and Digital Transformation. He managed national and international service, transformation and digitization projects in the public sector as well as in manufacturing, logistics, transportation, financial and automotive industries. Perea Rodríguez is also a member of the board of Initiative D21, a network dedicated to promoting digitalization in Germany.

“In geopolitically uncertain times like these, the ability to communicate securely is essential – especially for the public sector and regulated companies. Wire offers its customers security and privacy without compromise – and is developed entirely in Germany. This creates transparency and digital sovereignty,” says Juan Perea Rodríguez, General Manager and CCO of Wire. “I’m looking forward to the upcoming challenge and to working with many inspiring colleagues.”

Wire offers its customers an end-to-end encrypted communications platform for audio and video calls as well as chat communications and secure data transfer. The solution can be used either cloud-based or, for increased security requirements, on-premise. The German Federal Office for Information Security (BSI) has already issued a clearance recommendation for Wire for the communication of content classified as VS-NfD (Confidential). Over 1800 organizations worldwide rely on Wire’s secure communications solutions, including governments, parliaments, law enforcement and investigative agencies, as well as companies and infrastructure providers in areas such as telecommunications or energy.

As the co-initiators and key contributors of the IETF Messaging Layer Security (MLS) standard, which is​​ about to be adopted, Wire is currently helping to lay the foundations for the future of secure communications and communications in general.

Wire raises €24m to bring secure collaboration into the next era amidst growing geopolitical tensions

Led by investors Cipio Partners and Iconical, this funding round will fuel the company’s ability to further develop its industry-leading solution for mission-critical secure collaboration.

Berlin, August 2022 

What is your mission statement? 

Our mission has always been to create the most secure communications and collaboration platform. We’ve focused on building an infrastructure that enterprises and governments can rely upon for all communications across teams, clients, and partners. Particularly with remote and hybrid working models emerging as the norm against the backdrop of fast-growing cyber threats, Wire provides levels of data protection and privacy protocols that are both incredibly robust and suitable for organizations that truly value privacy.

What makes Wire stand out from its competitors? 

Since its inception, Wire’s core differentiator has been its end-to-end encryption (E2EE) approach. Wire was founded upon three key pillars to drive enterprise communication and collaboration forward: security, privacy, and user experience.

In today’s hybrid/remote work environment, these pillars have held steady, and highlighted how Wire has anticipated the security architecture needs of the present and the future. Many organizations are now realizing the importance of E2EE and “zero trust”-based applications to address the significant productivity, security, privacy, and regulation challenges all at once, and are adopting Wire to help manage these issues.

What is the biggest cybersecurity problem that we are currently facing?

Cyberattacks – and in particular, ransomware – has quickly become one of the greatest cybersecurity threats to rupture enterprises and governments, at scale. In the past year alone, ransomware attacks have continued to climb in number and severity, with global ransomware recovery costs doubling from an average of $761,106 in 2020 to $1.85 million in 2021.

This year’s slew of attacks, including the Colonial Pipeline and Kasaya, demonstrate the fundamental need for a new security infrastructure based on zero trust, data sovereignty, and federation. To achieve this, nation states need to take proactive measures – in close collaboration with the private sector and leading tech vendors – to best mitigate and future proof against the privacy and security challenges that will occur now and in the next few years.

What impact has Covid-19 had on cybersecurity trends? How has Wire evolved to keep up with this? 

The number of cybersecurity threats rose to new heights at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. During the first four months of the pandemic alone, it was reported that cyberattacks spiked by an estimated 400%. In many ways, the pandemic has simply acted as a catalyst for many pre-existing factors and illuminated the security vulnerabilities that exist within an

organization. As businesses were thrown into the sudden shift to remote work, organizations scrambled to refine their cybersecurity approaches, leaving a prime opening for cybercriminals.

At Wire, the continuous spate of cyberattacks has validated our security-by-design approach, and we continue to work closely with our partners and customers to ensure that they have the security architecture in place to address these challenges.

Is there anything else that you would like to tell us about Wire? 

Wire continues to grow at an exponential rate – in April we announced our Series B funding, where we also mentioned our 3x annual revenue growth, driven by significant customer wins across sectors including energy, financial services, government, and other industries.

Against the backdrop of constant cybersecurity threats, geopolitical tensions, and concerns around privacy regulation, Wire has a steadfast commitment to staying ahead of the curve by providing organizations with the most secure collaboration platform that the industry has to offer.

About Wire

Wire is the most secure collaboration platform, transforming the way businesses communicate at the same speed and with the same impact that our founders disrupted telephony with Skype. Headquartered in Berlin with offices in Switzerland and San Francisco, Wire’s award-winning collaboration and communications platform counts over 1,800 government and enterprise customers worldwide, including EY, Fortum, the German government and four other G7 governments. Recognized for its secure collaboration platform as a leader and high performer by G2 Crowd, IDC, Forrester and Gartner, Wire offers messaging, audio/video conferencing, file-sharing, and external collaboration – all protected by the most advanced end-to-end encryption.

Try our internal communications software for free today.Simply create a team and start communicating and collaborating securely in minutes. Looking for a walkthrough of our enterprise communication solution?  Contact us  today to learn how Wire fits into your organization.

This is an excerpt from the original interview published by Tyler Gallagher on Medium, September 1st, 2021

Can you tell us a bit about how you grew up?

I grew up in Ringsted, Denmark — a rural city 50 km outside of Copenhagen — with my younger brother and we had parents who were both school teachers. This was an age before mobiles and I didn’t have my first until I was 26 and started working at Nokia. I remember that I got a 5110 and a 15 Commodore 64 with a tape station, needless to say, my youth was spent outside and I probably tried any sport that I could get my hands on. Is there a particular story that inspired you to pursue a career in cybersecurity? We’d love to hear it.

I am not sure that cybersecurity was an inspiration per se, but I “grew up” in telecoms working with prepaid network systems and later roaming. It was at this point that I became painfully aware of the amount of monetary fraud that was perpetrated against telcos globally.

So my “inspiration” was really finding out that telco fraud or ransomware always just ended up in the pockets of criminals or bad state actors and knowing that the problem was just growing at enormous rates. I ran a personal sanity check on how much money could have been used for “good” purposes and it eventually became a mission and driving force on what I wanted to do in my career. Now, I am happy that Wire is helping governments secure their communication and if we can be known for helping organizations like a hospital lower taxes or funds by saving them from being victims of a ransomware attack — that would be the ultimate inspiration.

Are you working on any exciting new projects now? How do you think that will help people?

I am really excited about the work we are doing in transforming collaboration within governments to be more secure, private, and data sovereign. It is clear that instant communication is here to stay, but so is the threat of hacking, cyber-espionage, etc.

I’m also excited about the fact that this work combines so well with Wire’s mission of delivering federation through Messaging Layer Security (MLS). The notion of different nation states having their own data sovereign instance and connecting that with an international organization or other government organizations would be a fantastic outcome. Rather than having these large valuable databases, we can encrypt them into the smallest payload — making it data sovereign and then connecting backends. I am proud to say that many of our government customers share that vision.

The Cybersecurity industry, as it is today, is such an exciting arena. What are the 3 things that most excite you about the Cybersecurity industry? Can you explain?

I am super excited about the fact that cybersecurity has now moved up the importance ladder. The World Economic Forum listed cybersecurity in the top 3 issues facing humanity alongside the environment and health crisis and a lot of world leaders have now stepped up to the plate with early plans of getting a new infrastructure in place. I am especially excited about the three different approaches from Biden, Macron, and Merkel that will each have an effect in creating a new cyber-infrastructure. Biden is focusing on zero-trust and immediate action, Macron is investing into programs 5–20 years out on the horizon, and Merkel with a data sovereign approach to combat data hoarding practices from tech giants. These three things are really exciting to see since I absolutely believe that we need new approaches to cybersecurity.

Looking ahead to the near future, are there critical threats on the horizon that you think companies need to start preparing for?

• Ransomware attacks have continued to be an ever evolving cybersecurity threat, across a variety of industries. This type of cyber attack can have a detrimental impact on ongoing operations, team productivity and ultimately your company’s bottom line, given its ability to encrypt essential information, for a substantial amount of time. Over the past year ransomware attacks have continued to climb in number and severity, with global ransomware recovery costs doubling from an average of $761,106 in 2020 to $1.85 million in 2021. The latest ransomware attacks on the Colonial Pipeline and most recently on Kasaya, have only continued to demonstrate that this problem is not at a risk of slowing down in the near future. It is critical that IT leaders, Chief Security Officers, and managers safeguard their data against ransomware by pursuing a new security-first infrastructure that is composed of Zero Trust elements such as end-to-end encryption, and decentralized data storage and protection.
• Phishing attacks are one of the most common cybersecurity threats that can impact an organization. A series of research reports have shown that 91% of successful cyberattacks start with a phishing email, wherein bad actors often coax users into opening malicious links embedded in the body of the message.If you or someone in your organization comes across a phishing attempt, it is always best to report these to IT teams, or a cybersecurity officer, who can then choose to combat this in two ways:
• Invest in technology that provides a secure environment. While “open” email systems are cheaper and more common, the risk they pose is not worth it — especially if you are a large enterprise or government organization that deals with mission- critical, confidential data everyday. Instead of using email, businesses should use a secure (end-to-end encrypted and invitation-only) platform to communicate and collaborate, particularly when sensitive items are being shared.
• Businesses should implement mandatory cybersecurity training for employees. Even in the best case scenario where a company invests heavily in cybersecurity technology, the whole system can still fall susceptible to human error. This is why it’s crucial to educate employees on how to identify and defend against potential cyber attacks.

Do you have a story from your experience about a cybersecurity breach that you helped fix or stop? What were the main takeaways from that story?

I am not doing operational cybersecurity per se, but I think that what we are doing at Wire is changing the information architecture approach from large databases to smaller encrypted payloads. I think this is the only way we move on from massive breaches and ransom payments, we need new infrastructure.

We all admire Elon Musk for trying to make transportation more environmentally friendly, we need to come together to do the same in the cybersecurity community. We need to find a new sustainable infrastructure that starts to cut the massive growth in cyber crime.

Right now, I feel that the team at Wire is trying to do just that and we are working with amazing companies in IETF to bring about MLS. My main takeaway is that we as a community need to really rethink our core architectures. We need the same impetus and urgency to act now, similar to the actions taken with green energy or the vaccine programs of COVID.

What are the “5 Things Every Company Needs To Know To Tighten Up Its Approach to Data Privacy and Cybersecurity” and why?

1. Adopt a Zero Trust approach

Zero Trust is a dynamic and hyper-vigilant security model that employs continuous monitoring and improvement to systems as a proactive defense against cyberthreats. The zero trust approach operates exactly as it’s name entails, assuming that organizations should not automatically trust anything inside or outside its perimeters. Platforms that run on the zero trust framework assume that all data, devices, apps and users both inside or outside of the corporate network are inherently insecure and, therefore, must be authenticated/verified before being granted access. Adopting a Zero Trust approach, entails leveraging stringent protocols and technologies such as multi-factor authentication, end-to-end encryption, identity access management, orchestration, and other comprehensive system permissions and safeguards. Rather than lowering cybersecurity safeguards within an internal network, Zero Trust ensures that anything inside or outside a corporate network (including data, devices, systems and users) is treated with stringent security measures regardless.

2. Provide company policies around tools

Research has continued to reveal that the majority of successful cyberattacks begin with a phishing email, often arising from “open” email systems, such as Gmail, where messages are able to be sent and received from anyone. This type of open email system provides an environment where those who are not trained on how to identify the warning signs of a scam (or people who are trained but are moving too quickly to pay proper attention) become easy targets for bad actors. As email is a ubiquitous practice in daily business operations, it is essential to establish concrete guidelines around which communication tools are appropriate for sensitive conversations. Conversations that include references to company IP, customer data, or other types of sensitive information should be reserved for trusted security channels, and must be kept off platforms that are susceptible to known security and privacy flaws.

3. Invest in cybersecurity training

Enforcing cybersecurity training is a necessary procedure to help spearhead cybersecurity awareness across one’s organization. It is never best to assume that cybersecurity practices are common knowledge to your employees. According to a survey from software company LoopUp, 70% of business professionals said it was normal to discuss company confidential information on calls, despite the fact that many popular solutions don’t offer end-to-end encryption by default. In a fast paced world where immediacy and ease is highly valued, building a true culture of security means taking the time to thoroughly educate employees on the how and why of cybersecurity. Cybersecurity training should include, but not be limited to, educating employees on the weak points of cybersecurity, alerting them to the critical business and legal risks of a breach, providing teams with the right tools for sharing and discussing confidential information, and training everyone in proper protocol to defend against attacks (and recover in the event of a breach).

4. Update your tech stack

Chief security officers and IT leaders must not overlook the significance of reevaluating their tech stack on an ongoing basis. Ensuring that security technology is up to date on correct security protocols and protections is especially important, in our current era of hybrid work, where remote workers (and therefore your company’s digital assets) are more vulnerable to cybercriminals, while operating outside of traditional perimeter-based security protections. Consider shifting all critical communications — where sensitive data and information is shared — to a secure environment that offers end-to-end encryption and is invitation-only.

5. Prepare your teams for the worst

Even organizations that do their due diligence to educate employees and utilize secure platforms and systems can still fall victim to cyber attacks. Therefore, it’s important to understand how the business will react in the event of an incident, and develop a plan for action. When developing these procedures, some key questions to ask yourself can be: how will business continuity be guaranteed if corporate networks or systems are compromised? What are the roles and responsibilities of key stakeholders in a crisis event? How will secure internal communications function? At the end of the day, effective management and response to a crisis is just as critical as proactive measures and can be a key factor in minimizing damage.

About Rasmus Holst

Rasmus Holst is the chief revenue officer of Wire, an open source, end-to-end encrypted collaboration platform. Throughout his career, Rasmus has delivered growth, exits, restructuring, strategic direction and customer retention across start-ups and established multi-million-dollar businesses. He joins Wire from Huddle, where he served as the company’s Chief Operating Officer. Rasmus has served in senior leadership roles at Syniverse, Oracle, Intec, Digiquant, and Nokia.

About Wire

Wire is the most secure collaboration platform, transforming the way businesses communicate at the same speed and with the same impact that our founders disrupted telephony with Skype. Headquartered in Berlin with offices in Switzerland and San Francisco, Wire’s award-winning collaboration and communications platform counts over 1,800 government and enterprise customers worldwide, including EY, Fortum, the German government and four other G7 governments. Recognized for its secure collaboration platform as a leader and high performer by G2 Crowd, IDC, Forrester and Gartner, Wire offers messaging, audio/video conferencing, file-sharing, and external collaboration – all protected by the most advanced end-to-end encryption.

Try our internal communications software for free today. Simply create a team and start communicating and collaborating securely in minutes. Looking for a walkthrough of our enterprise communication solution? Contact us today to learn how Wire fits into your organization.

Now, we want to further strengthen that support in partnership with you—the Wire community (Wire users). For every participant in any of our research activities, whether a 1-minute survey or 1-hour interview, we will donate a proportionate amount to selected charities that align with our mission and values.

The reasons for this initiative are two-fold: we want to offer an appropriate compensation for people who participate in our research sessions, as well as to strengthen our commitment to supporting non-profit organizations.

As we began to reach out more frequently to the Wire community for essential feedback to help us make informed decisions, we needed a way to show our appreciation to the people who routinely took time out of their day to share valuable insights with us.

After careful review, we selected the first beneficiary from the Wire community who we will funnel our donations to:

Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) / Ärzte ohne Grenzen

Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) translates to Doctors without Borders, an international, independent medical humanitarian organisation that provides medical assistance to people affected by conflict, epidemics, disasters, or exclusion from healthcare.

To kick-off this initiative, we are donating $10 for every successfully recorded response in our most recent survey, where we hope to understand what about Wire is most important to you, and how we can improve on these key areas.

Take the 3-minute survey

We greatly appreciate those who have engaged with us and participated in research studies over the years, and we look forward to working together to build a better Wire.

We will select a different beneficiary every few months, so stay tuned for updates.

Encrypted communication and collaboration app Wire claim that it is “the most secure collaboration platform.”

I had heard this before, many times in fact, but had never seen any proof of this notion. One of the ways the company does this is via encrypting every message sent and received, reducing the chances of a malicious intrusion.

As such, this led me to sit down with the man who runs the show – Morten Brøgger, CEO, Wire, who chatted with me about everything from Amazon’s acquisition of messaging platform Wickr to man in the middle mobility.

He likens one of the most widely-used ways of setting up cloud architecture; to a slippery slope, nothing that this man in the middle method of encryption puts users in harm’s way, providing a clear path for bad actors to gain access to secret company data.

This is middle man mobility in a nutshell – and Brøgger said that it allows cloud providers to read and listen to any communications you have. In the case of getting served a legal subpoena – a cloud provider would have to hand over said encryption keys. But what if they cannot access the keys? For starters, they could not be compelled to provide said information, as it would be impossible to do so.

According to Brøgger, many companies need to get on the bandwagon and learn the true value of security and privacy over leveraging outdated methods to “keep data safe.” This is merely one of many several what he calls “clear signs from tech giants that secure messaging and collaboration are a must-have – right now,” as well as in the future.

Brøgger did, however, note, he believes that there is a lot to do so firms around the globe can further secure their communications and collaboration technology. He elaborated, stating:

“Security was not always the priority for enterprises last year when we suddenly and dramatically shifted how we work. Although Amazon and Zoom have recently made moves, many other large tech companies have not fully integrated more secure solutions.”

He continued noting; while Wire’s team is excited that organizations have started to embrace the significance of security in their tools – there is still much to be done to make the business of doing work (actually) secure. With advice for the growing number of what he calls “critical industries,” Brøgger notes, particularly those with close ties to sensitive government information and other enterprises:

“These folks should consider data governance and Zero Trust.”

The idea of “zero-trust” is an IT security model that requires a strict identity verification process for every person and device trying to access resources on a private network – no matter if they are within or outside of the network perimeter.

This is the philosophy Wire subscribes to, if it sounds familiar. Eliminating the Enterprise-Wide Encryption Key and replacing each message with a unique encryption code does bring enterprises one step closer to realizing (true) security, and on a device level, too.

Already, companies like Zoom have made strides toward remedying security for users; after backsliding on misleading secretary claims, it announced that it acquired Keybase to help it beef up user security efforts. The partnership would eventually deliver on the promise of extending end-to-end encryption to all Zoom users back in 2020 – both free and paid.

What’s at stake, Brøgger told GetVoIP News, is bigger than what most realize. Already, we’ve seen a rise in the number of cyberattacks from Russian hackers in recent years. And most recently, we witnessed the world’s largest financial ransom attack where hundreds of businesses from the U.S. to Europe were impacted, indicating that the issue will not halt anytime soon.

Looking toward the future, companies, Brøgger concluded, will have to think as governments do and prioritize end-user as well as organizational security to reduce their risk of unwanted intrusion, the loss of money as well as trade secrets.

Try our internal communications software for free today. Simply create a team and start communicating and collaborating securely in minutes. Looking for a walkthrough of our enterprise communication solution? Contact us today to learn how Wire fits into your organization.

Originally written by Maria Henriquez for Security Magazine

Security Magazine’s Maria Henriquez and Alan talkabout the various threats facing enterprises today, as well as how organizations can protect their employees and assets, and how organizations (and vendors) need to make a fundamental change to how they operate by implementing better security, technology, and approaches to build a security-first infrastructure.

Meet Alan Duric, co-founder and CTO/COO of Wire, a secure collaboration platform. He is an experienced leader with a strong background in real-time communications. He’s the co-founder and CTO of Telio Holding ASA, and Camino Networks, which was acquired by Skype/eBay. Duric is an early pioneer of VoIP technologies and a driving force in the standardization of the speech codecs that led to the WebRTC standard, which revolutionized how real-time communication products are built today.

What is your background, and what led you to the role of CTO and co-founder of Wire?

Duric: I have been in the Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) space for over 10 years now and have been in the tech industry for even longer. Before creating Wire, I worked in other tech leadership roles. I was a founder and CTO at Telio and was CTO at Camino Networks, which was eventually acquired by eBay/Skype. I’ve had the good fortune of working on the early front lines of VoIP, and was able to play a fairly big role in driving the development of WebRTC which is still used in many real-time communication products today.

What led me to my role at Wire was my desire to continue pushing the envelope and innovating in the collaboration tool space. Wire sprouted from a very organic process, driven by what the collaboration tool market needed. It began when a few of my partners and I realized that the VoIP and messaging space was moving towards mobile devices. We noticed that some providers were beginning to work towards fulfilling this need for better mobile communications, but also identified some huge gaps in the market. For example, Skype was changing the way we all communicate – through simplicity and accessibility – it allowed folks to talk to anyone around the world, but they were tailored for desktop use. In 2012, WhatsApp started picking up, allowing users to message easily on mobile devices but without any voice calling capabilities. Viber then emerged, and had good messaging and calling but no security. We realized that the collaboration space lacked a solution with: a good user experience, focus on mobile capabilities, and strong security and privacy. We felt that we could fill these needs, and that is how Wire came to be founded.

What are the biggest security and privacy issues that organizations should be aware of with collaboration tools?

Duric: Many messaging tools have become ubiquitous, but do not protect consumer data with essential Zero Trust technologies like end-to-end encryption (E2EE). The pandemic has put a spotlight on the collaboration tools space due to it’s growing use in our new fully remote work environment. This rapid and unplanned shift revealed the many flaws that existed and still exist in collaboration tools, especially messaging and video conferencing tools such as Zoom, Microsoft Teams, and WhatsApp. For example, Zoom saw a number of security issues ranging from bad actors hijacking private video conferences (aka ‘Zoombombing’) to egregious privacy issues like user data being used for ad targeting without user knowledge or permission. A combination of low barriers for entry for conference calls, integrations that led to backdoor security weaknesses (in the case of Microsoft Teams), and heaps of data privacy violations have all caused growing distrust in collaboration platforms and the security, or lack thereof, that they provide.

The bottom line is, if companies that develop these tools do not prioritize security for their own products, do not expect them to provide you with a secure solution. The seriousness of data privacy has only become more prevalent through the enactment of legislations such as the GDPR in Europe, and the newly passed CPRA in California. These movements towards data privacy show us that governments are starting to take this issue more seriously, meaning companies that push the boundaries without concerns for data privacy will start to feel more pressure to re-evaluate policies and technologies as time goes on.

How has the pandemic influenced these issues?

Duric: The pandemic really brought a lot of these pre-existing issues to the forefront. At the onset of the mandated lockdowns, millions of employees were shifted to remote work so suddenly that organizations had little time to thoroughly think through security implications. Remote employees inevitably created a higher level of cyber risk by operating outside of perimeter-based security (e.g. company firewalls, secure internet access). With employees working from unprotected home networks and possibly using devices or software that are not IT sanctioned, cybercriminals have new opportunities and vulnerabilities to attack and exploit.

Understandably, organizations were mainly concerned with handling the huge transition from in-office to remote work and simply sought out tools that were quick, accessible, and designed for hyper-connectivity. What those organizations soon learned is that those types of tools often make security and privacy sacrifices/shortcuts in order to maintain a simple user experience and compatibility with other applications. Security was an afterthought given the spate of cyberattacks (spiking as much as 400% in April) and glaring security issues that popular tools like Zoom and Microsoft Teams experienced at the beginning of the pandemic. The large influx of users drew the attention of cybercriminals and they exposed the flaws within these solutions.

What do companies need to know in order to best protect their employees and their data privacy? What is needed to ensure secure remote work?

Duric: Having a security-first infrastructure has become a crucial step for employers to implement this year for the protection of both their organization and employees. Many teams have recognized the importance of security and have started to prioritize patching and reworking aspects of their technology to anticipate threats. At the end of the day, however, these are retroactive fixes and will not be enough. Instead, organizations (and vendors) need to make a fundamental change to how they operate by implementing better security, technology, and approaches to build a security-first infrastructure.

Here are three elements that should be included:

1. Transparency

Maintaining trust with users is critical and being transparent is vital to building a solid reputation for a platform. This approach can involve: adopting an open source approach, third party audits, and clear privacy policies. First, making a platform open source will allow developers outside the organization to review the code and ensure that any promises of data protection are followed through. Third party audits bring in security experts and researchers to conduct independent and in-depth analysis of a platform, providing a credible review that users can trust. Clear privacy policies give users better insight and confidence on the solution’s inner workings, especially with the management of sensitive data. Transparency is crucial to the success of a security-first architecture.

2. Zero Trust

Zero Trust is a security model that assumes that all data, devices, apps and users inside or outside of the corporate network are inherently insecure and given limited access. A truly holistic Zero Trust model applies to everything including policies, technologies and human behavior. Zero Trust also requires the utilization of technology such as: end-to-end encryption, multi-factor authentication, identity access management, network segmentation, and other system permissions which must be implemented.

3. End-to-end encryption

The definition of “end-to-end encryption” has become more unclear given its heavy usage in marketing materials and claims by companies that are not implementing it properly. Not all E2EE is created equal and multiple protocols do exist, but a good standard is being AES-256 bit, which can protect against side-channel and man-in-the-middle attacks. Key management is another critical aspect of encryption as gaining access to the keys can easily unlock encrypted files or messages. Look for strong systems like a double ratchet algorithm, which allows every message, call, and file to be separately encrypted on every device, with keys generated from the device rather than a server. Aim to protect information to the smallest possible unit as it would make it far more complex to decrypt and pick out specific data.

What will be most important for organizations to keep in mind moving into 2021?

Duric: In 2021, it’s possible that the global economy will shift to single-digit growth, as countries begin restarting economic activity in the aftermath of COVID-19. However, as remote work and insecure data practices persist within most organizations, cyber breach costs are slated to hit double-digit growth across all industries, with cyberattacks being the 4th highest risk for doing business in the world – right after fiscal crises and infectious diseases. Unless corporations, government agencies, and countries figure out how to mitigate these cyber risks, the global community could suffer catastrophic economic losses that will take years to rectify.

This will mean that organizations will see greater value in technologies that secure their operations while maintaining mobility. Organizations will selectively choose tools that can serve them in uncertain circumstances, which makes solutions with a security-first approach more appealing. Cyberthreats are not going anywhere, and if anything they will only continue to rise with companies starting to adopt permanent work from home policies. E2EE and other Zero Trust technologies will no longer be an optional component, as they will become essential to ensuring that both the company and its employees are kept safe from malicious actors looking to exploit new remote work vulnerabilities.

Customer demand for privacy and security has surged, and by the end of next year companies will expect and incorporate more security technologies across all communication and collaboration tools. Looking back at 2020, a security-first approach will be essential in the coming year as the rate of cyberattacks will likely hit an all time high. Luckily, organizations have more security tools available than ever before and all they need is a strong resolution to prioritize security in the new year.

About Wire

Wire is the most secure collaboration platform, transforming the way businesses communicate at the same speed that our founders disrupted telephony with Skype. Headquartered in Berlin with offices in Switzerland and San Francisco, Wire’s award-winning collaboration and communications platform counts over 1,800 enterprise customers worldwide. Recognized by IDC, Forrester, and Gartner as one of the most secure collaboration platforms, Wire offers messaging, audio/video conferencing, file-sharing, and external collaboration – all protected by the strongest end-to-end encryption.

If you are searching for the most secure collobration platform, look no further. But don’t take our word for it, try it for free today.

Looking for a walkthrough of our enterprise communication solution? Contact us today to learn how Wire fits into your organization.

BERLIN & SAN FRANCISCO, 14 April, 2021

Wire, the most secure collaboration platform, today announced it has closed a $21m Series B funding round led by VC firm UVC Partners. This investment comes off the back of Wire’s 3x annual revenue growth in 2020, and a number of significant customer wins across sectors such as energy, financial services and government – including five of the G7 governments.

With remote and hybrid working models emerging as the new normal, it is critical for governments and enterprises to ensure they have the right infrastructure to maintain both productivity and security. Data protection and privacy protocols must become more robust, while remaining dynamic in the context of the world’s growing cyber threats, continued geopolitical tensions and increasing complexities around privacy regulation.

“Our investment in Wire shows our strong belief in their leadership team as well as their product and trajectory to date, particularly given their phenomenal revenue growth has well outpaced the market. Wire’s platform is vital for serving the needs of governments and large-scale enterprises, which require the highest levels of security and privacy in their collaboration tools.” Dr. Ingo Potthof, Managing Partner at UVC Partners

Developed with the highest levels of security from the outset, Wire’s platform offers messenger, voice, video, conference calls, file-sharing and external collaboration, built upon an infrastructure of industry-leading end-to-end encryption to ensure that all data that passes through it remains secure and private. Wire’s unique security capabilities and custom deployment options cater to enterprises and governments looking to protect their documents, and secure communications across teams, clients and partners.

This latest round of funding follows a three-year period of consistent quarter-on-quarter growth, and an almost 50% increase in customer base (currently 1,800 government and enterprise customers worldwide) from where the company stood just under a year ago.

“Wire’s mission has always been to create the most secure platform, suitable for mission-critical communications and for organizations that truly value privacy. I’m proud of our team and the platform we have built so far.” Morten Brøgger, CEO of Wire.

“It is fantastic to be able to add UVC Partners to our investment team. Backing from them not only provides further validation of our security-by-design approach, but will help propel us towards meeting and anticipating the security architecture needs of the future, with edge-based, zero trust applications. Our enterprise and government customers constantly grapple with monumental productivity, security and privacy issues all at once, and Wire is best positioned to address these challenges.”

Wire will be using the funding to support growth across its organisation. It plans to continue investing in its technology and platform, with further product announcements expected later in the year. It is also actively hiring, looking to grow its industry-leading team of currently just over 90 staff members, who are based across Wire’s HQ in Berlin and offices in Switzerland and San Francisco.

About Wire

Wire is the most secure collaboration platform, transforming the way businesses communicate at the same speed and with the same impact that our founders disrupted telephony with Skype. Headquartered in Berlin with offices in Switzerland and San Francisco, Wire’s award-winning collaboration and communications platform counts over 1,800 government and enterprise customers worldwide, including EY, Fortum, the German government and four other G7 governments. Recognized for its secure collaboration platform as a leader and high performer by G2 Crowd, IDC, Forrester and Gartner, Wire offers messaging, audio/video conferencing, file-sharing, and external collaboration – all protected by the most advanced end-to-end encryption.

About UVC Partners

Unternehmertum Venture Capital Partners (UVC Partners) is a Munich- and Berlin-based early-stage venture capital firm that invests in European B2B startups in the areas of enterprise software, industrial technologies and mobility. The fund typically invests between € 0.5 – 5m initially and up to € 20m in total per company.

Portfolio companies benefit from the extensive investment and exit experience of the management team as well as from the close cooperation with UnternehmerTUM, Europe’s leading innovation and business creation center. With over 240 employees and more than 100 industry partners, UnternehmerTUM can draw from many years of experience in establishing young companies. This cooperation enables UVC Partners to offer startups unique access to talent, industry customers, and other financial partners.

Try our internal communications software for free today. Simply create a team and start communicating and collaborating securely in minutes.

Looking for a walkthrough of our enterprise communication solution? Contact us today to learn how Wire fits into your organization.

The recognition comes as another accolade following the launch of our next-generation conferencing capability to scale and give customers better control of their data while supporting their workers’ communication needs.

Built to serve all business, from startups, to enterprise, to the most demanding organizations – with wire you can collaborate with your team, clients, and partners all in one platform. Whether in the office or on the couch, you can connect instantly by message, start an audio or video conference call, create groups, send and search files, set up guest rooms, and much more. Wire was built with functionality and security in mind, putting your data saftey first so you don’t have to compromise.

About Wire

Wire is the most secure collaboration platform, transforming the way businesses communicate at the same speed that our founders disrupted telephony with Skype. Headquartered in Berlin with offices in Switzerland and San Francisco, Wire’s award-winning collaboration and communications platform counts over 1,800 enterprise customers worldwide. Recognized by IDC, Forrester, and Gartner as one of the most secure collaboration platforms, Wire offers messaging, audio/video conferencing, file-sharing, and external collaboration – all protected by the strongest end-to-end encryption.

Researchers at Digital.com conducted a 40-hour assessment of over 60 softwares, looking at solutions that deliver added security through AES 256-bit encryption, which prevents data thieves from stealing valuable files, as well as being user-friendly and seamlessly integrating with frequently used apps and tools.

A secure way to share files across teams and with clients

Wire helps organizations overcome the security and productivity limitations of email and other file-sharing services. Our full end-to-end encrypted collaboration and communication platform extends its security to all features, including the exchange of documents.

Unlike others, no documents are kept or indexed on our servers in unencrypted form. This provides your files and messages with an extra layer of security. Each file and message is also encrypted with a unique key, so breaking one key does not give access to anything else. We put a lot of powerful functionality on your devices so that you can be more productive while remaining secure at all times and from anywhere. Seamlessly message, start an audio or video conference call, create groups, send and search files, set up guest rooms, and much more – all in one platform.

About Digital.com

Digital.com reviews and compares the best products, services, and software for running or growing a small business website or online shop. The platform collects twitter comments and uses sentiment analysis to score companies and their products. Digital.com was founded in 2015 and formerly known as Review Squirrel.

About Wire

Wire is the most secure collaboration platform, transforming the way businesses communicate at the same speed that our founders disrupted telephony with Skype. Headquartered in Berlin with offices in Switzerland and San Francisco, Wire’s award-winning collaboration and communications platform counts over 1,800 enterprise customers worldwide. Recognized by IDC, Forrester, and Gartner as one of the most secure collaboration platforms, Wire offers messaging, audio/video conferencing, file-sharing, and external collaboration – all protected by the strongest end-to-end encryption.

Try our secure file-sharing for free today. Simply create a team and start communicating and collaborating securely in minutes.

Looking for a walkthrough of our enterprise communication solution? Contact us today to learn how Wire fits into your organization.