Data synchronization service moves from Microsoft Deutschland GmbH to IONOS cloud.
Managing Director Detlef Schmuck: “Our customers’ data will continue to remain in a data center under European control.”
Hamburg, March 16, 2021 – In light of deglobalization, the rise of international trade and technology wars, and fundamentally different approaches to data protection in the EU and the U.S., Hamburg-based TeamDrive GmbH has moved its eponymous data service to a German cloud “in every respect.” According to the company, the transfer of customer data of all European TeamDrive users from the cloud of Microsoft Deutschland GmbH to the high-performance data centers of IONOS GmbH has been completed. IONOS is one of the largest hosting providers in Europe. There would be no changes for customers other than an even higher level of security than before.
The TeamDrive service enables the automatic synchronization of data files between multiple servers, desktops, tablets and smartphones in strict compliance with the General Data Protection Regulation and all other legal regulations in Germany. End-to-end encryption, with only customers holding the keys, ensures that no unauthorized person – including authorities and even the operator themself – can read the data files. According to TeamDrive, the service is currently experiencing “extremely strong demand” because companies can use it to connect their home office employees in a tap-proof and legally compliant manner at a cost of just under 5 euros per month per workstation.
Prepared for all transatlantic upheavals
TeamDrive CEO Detlef Schmuck explains the change in detail: “We were happy to work with Microsoft Germany, and of course we made sure that all our customer data was stored at data centers in Germany. But in the end, the German Microsoft GmbH belongs to a US group and is subject to US legislation and thus regulations such as the US CloudAct. This meant that we could not permanently rule out the possibility of US government agencies gaining access to our customers’ data. Admittedly, all of our data assets are end-to-end encrypted, and even we as a service operator do not possess any keys to our customers’ data. So whoever gains access to our data files cannot do anything with it. Nevertheless, a residual uncertainty remained, from a legal point of view, which we are now eliminating by switching to a purely German company like IONOS. IONOS GmbH belongs to United Internet AG, which has a majority German shareholder structure. This means that we and our customers are prepared for all eventualities in transatlantic relations.”
TeamDrive CEO Detlef Schmuck describes the decisive factor for the change as the fact that the European Court of Justice ECJ had declared the transatlantic data protection agreement EU-US Privacy Shield invalid on July 16, 2020. “The step had been foreseeable after the ECJ had already overturned the predecessor agreement on October 6, 2015. We had therefore been preparing for this move to a purely German cloud in every respect for some time,” explains Detlef Schmuck.
At the new partner IONOS, the TeamDrive data is located in ISO 27001-certified data centers in Germany, which have several redundant fiber optic connections with over 360 Gbit/s. Like TeamDrive, IONOS attaches great importance to compliance with the DSGVO data protection directive and protects the data from access by government agencies. With a central firewall and the latest security technologies such as SIEM (Security Information and Event Management) and IDS/IPS (Intrusion Detection / Intrusion Prevention), the cloud servers are protected against attacks.
Advice to all German companies to divest themselves of US data services
The Hamburg-based data security expert advises all German companies to get their corporate data out of the U.S. and secure it with a German data service provider. He says: “It does make a difference whether the company data is stored by a German provider on a server in Germany or on a server operated by a US company. In the first case, the law of the Federal Republic of Germany applies under all circumstances; in the second case, there is a risk that U.S. law will be valued more highly than German law.”
