Data is a double-edged sword. In only a few years, it has become an unprecedented source of business and social opportunities like the world has never witnessed before. But at the same time, it has turned into a critical, high-value asset to protect. When data is breached, it can upend entire businesses and compromise citizens’ lives with uncontrollable consequences.
Aware of this, citizens have become more skeptical about the use that businesses and administrations make of their private data.
The last Eurobarometer on data protection before the entry into force of GDPR revealed that 92% of Europeans are concerned about software applications collecting their data without their consent, while only 15% believe they are in control of their personal data.
This phenomenon is particularly clear with respect to online businesses and big-tech corporations,
such as search engines and email service providers. Only 3% of EU citizens trust email and digital service providers to protect their personal information, while big scandals on the treatment of personal data by American tech giants, have given rise to unprecedented levels of mistrust amongst citizens worldwide.
The situation for businesses also reveals the rising impact of security breaches. There were 2.6 billion records compromised in 2017, with only 4% of these breaches being secure breaches, i.e. those where encryption rendered the stolen data useless. Even worse, over 70% of these go undetected.
With digitalization now fully reaching companies of all sizes, the global cost associated with managing the impact of data breaches is expected to rise to $2.1 trillion by 20198, with a four-year increase of 96%.
The problem is that today businesses vastly rely on US-based collaboration and office suites, which are not secure by design. The skepticism towards the possibility of big corporations exploiting their clients’ data is the most immediate answer to why cloud service providers like Google or Microsoft don’t apply state-of-the-art encryption to their clients’ data.
ProtonMail, our flagship product, achieved outstanding results, rising above all competitors in the end-to-end encryption space through a superior user interface.
Our goal now is to go one step further and offer a fully encrypted office suite: a 360-degrees approach that lets consumers and businesses from all over the world benefit from the highest level of data privacy, not only in their email communications but in their everyday, highly digitalized life.
