Detlef Schmuck: “German cloud data service can be more secure than your own server.”
Hamburg, June 28, 2023 – “Many medium-sized companies are too careless with business-critical data,” says data security expert Detlef Schmuck. In particular, far too little attention is paid to the “gateway of IT administration”, he complains. Detlef Schmuck explains: “At many SMEs, it’s not just the IT administrator who has unrestricted access to all company data, but also the IT-savvy trainee. When they leave the company later on, they often retain their access rights because nobody thinks about it.”
The granular IT authorization systems commonly used by large companies are often dispensed with in SMEs for cost reasons. Essentially, each user is only granted those access rights to databases that are absolutely necessary for the respective workstation. “However, managing individual access authorizations requires a great deal of effort, especially as there is always a tendency on the user side to want to obtain more access rights than are actually required for the job,” Detlef Schmuck knows from numerous projects in SMEs. He says: “Many SMEs are still overwhelmed by the challenges of digitalization, especially when it comes to security issues.”
Detlef Schmuck gives examples: “Whereas in the analog world, documents containing sensitive information such as payrolls or business plans could be securely locked away and only made accessible to the employees involved, this is many times more difficult in the digital world. Shared folders on a file server or a NAS system can always be viewed by any system administrator for the server in addition to the authorized employees. Many companies are not even aware of this risk. For example, an authorized colleague who is supposed to look after the server gains access to all sensitive data without anyone noticing. Because as soon as the person knows the server password for administration, all other access restrictions no longer provide any protection.”
Cloud data management as a remedy
As a remedy, Detlef Schmuck advises the use of a cloud-based data management system with corresponding features. He names end-to-end data encryption and a zero-knowledge architecture as the most important criteria. This means, firstly, that all data in the cloud is completely encrypted and is only decrypted when authorized access is required and, secondly, that even the cloud administrator does not have any keys to the data. This is in contrast to the IT environments in many medium-sized companies, where every employee with administrative rights has access to the email correspondence of all employees. Although the company’s own computers are often well protected by encryption, as soon as the data leaves the local computer, it is usually exposed to a high risk, as Detlef Schmuck knows from projects. He adds: “All external system administrators are also among those who can gain unauthorized access to confidential documents. This risk also exists for the Exchange or other e-mail servers. As a rule, all emails and attachments are stored unencrypted on the server and are only encrypted during transmission.”
Detlef Schmuck is Managing Director of the Hamburg-based high-security cloud service TeamDrive and claims: “Our cloud service keeps company data more secure than most medium-sized companies in Germany.” With TeamDrive, the software not only handles automatic encryption, but also ensures secure key management and secure key exchange. This means that each user only has access to the data they actually need for their business tasks. In addition, all access is seamlessly logged so that it can be determined at any time, even retrospectively, who accessed which information and when. In accordance with the zero-knowledge principle, the cloud operator itself, i.e. TeamDrive, does not have any access keys to customer data.
All legal requirements are met
Also important: TeamDrive fulfills all legal requirements applicable in Germany in accordance with the GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) and GoBD (Principles for the proper keeping and storage of books, records and documents in electronic form). This means that both confidential personal data, such as payroll accounting, and trade secrets, such as calculations or contracts, can be stored in the cloud in a legally compliant manner. The fact that TeamDrive is completely in German hands despite the anglicized company name and that all customer data also remains in the legal area of the Federal Republic of Germany contributes to security.
TeamDrive is regarded as “secure sync & share software made in Germany” for storing, synchronizing and sharing data and documents. It is based on end-to-end encryption, which ensures that only the user himself can read the data – neither TeamDrive nor any authority in the world can decrypt the data. This technical and legally binding security is appreciated by over 500,000 users and more than 5,500 companies from all sectors, from industry and healthcare to law firms, business and tax consultancy and public administration. TeamDrive ensures that all data is stored exclusively on servers in Germany and guarantees compliance with German data protection legislation. TeamDrive supports Windows, Mac OS, Linux, Android and iOS. The newly added Hornetdrive service further expands this position.
