EMEA: Secure your data – German style

We all know that Germany takes its rules, process and privacy seriously. I’m not being sarcastic; I live here, so I can say this. And you know what, there are a lot of good things about this. It’s a safe country, people are true to their word, and genuine in what they say — although sometimes it could be blunter then you’d like to hear. But it seems the news continues about more safeguards from ‘data snooping’ in place for the German public. Seems the Merkel phone NSA incident has gotten Germans very nervous.
Last year when the Facebook acquisition of Whatsapp was announced, suddenly two startups named Threema and Telegram were in the news. Germany has 30 million Whatsapp users and on the day of the announcement many of them started flocking to other solutions, those with encrypted services. On the day of the announcement alone Threema gained 200,000 new users, of which 80% came from Germany. Telegram garnered 500,000 that day.
One year after the Facebook announcement it seems Telegram has outpaced Threema. Threema reports only 2.8 million users in comparison to Telegram with 35 million users a year later. Although many questions abound as to how secure a free app can actually be. But their user base continues to grow. Fifteen million of their users are active on a daily basis with 8 billion messages being handled.
Now there’s another new player out of this region. Say hello to SIMSme, a new secure messaging app from the Deutsche Post. Yes, the post office (well actually its DHL), but in Germany it does a lot more then the post office in the United States. Its video is interesting and very ‘in your face’ about the things that should scare you about using non-encrypted solutions. Check it out.
Deutsche Post actually has legacy in this space. In 2012 it launched DocWallet, a way to secure your documents and always be able to access them when you are away from your home/business without worrying about Internet connections and cloud services that don’t have adequate security, although it is only focused on the iPhone, iPad, Mac and PC. It doesn’t publish user numbers so it’s difficult to gauge how successful it has been. Its key selling points have a focus on German engineering, privacy and security. It was developed in conjunction with the Fraunhofer Research Institute and uses dedicated German servers.
And don’t forget the German cloud and Internet discussions. Vodafone has launched a ‘Made in Germany’ cloud. Although it states that localized hosting and cloud services have always been important in this market, there is acknowledgement that they have increased following all of the NSA snooping concerns.
The week prior to Vodafone’s announcement, Deutsche Telekom announced an investment in CipherCloud in order to bring encrypted cloud services including the data transfer to/from the cloud to its customers. It also launched secure email services. In a market with data privacy rules like Germany, there appears to be quite a high appetite for secure services within the German borders.
One can’t mention the cloud without also mentioning Merkel’s public statements that the EU requires an ‘NSA-free zone’ or a Euro Internet. The direction of this statement is to work with companies who take data protection seriously, which implies avoidance of U.S.-based firms.
You might be wondering why this is such a hot button in Germany. You can’t forget the legacy of government oversight this country experienced in the past. Businesses and individuals take this very seriously. At times it feels a bit overkill coming from the States, but I think somewhere in the middle would be a good place for everyone to land.
So we say hello to another secure messaging app out of Germany. Let’s see if the market actually thinks we need another one or not.
Claudia Bacco, Managing Director – EMEA, has spent her entire career in telecom, IT and Security. Having experience at an operator, software and hardware vendors and as a well-known industry analyst, she has many opinions on the market. She’ll be sharing those opinions along with ongoing trend analysis for RCR Wireless through daily contributions going forward.