Proton, the Swiss company behind privacy and security services such as Proton Mail and Proton VPN has launched Proton Workspace, a suite of business productivity tools to compete with offerings from Google and Microsoft.
While Proton, like Google, started as a consumer company and has attracted over 100 million users looking for an alternative to the Google ecosystem, it has also been successful at attracting businesses. Today, Proton counts over 100’000 enterprise customers spread across its ecosystems of products which today includes Proton Mail, Calendar, Drive/Docs/Sheets, VPN, password management, and Lumo, it’s privacy first AI.
While Proton’s enterprise customers initially adopted individual products to address specific needs, an increasingly large number are now adopting the entire Proton ecosystem. This shift has driven the development of Proton Workspace, a consolidated offering that unifies all services into a single, cohesive bundle, according toAndy Yen, Founder and CEO of Proton.
Together with Proton Workspace, the company is simultaneously launching Proton Meet, an encrypted video conferencing solution that fills a key missing piece in Proton’s productivity ecosystem. Proton Meet is a video conferencing solution not dissimilar to Zoom, but with two key differences, according to Yen.
First, all video calls and chats in Proton Meet are end-to-end encrypted by default using the new Messaging Layer Security (MLS) encryption protocol. This gives Proton Meet a level of security that is unmatched by any other video conferencing service in existence today, Yen says.
With Proton Meet, the confidentiality of conversations can be assured even if Proton’s infrastructure is compromised. Second, Proton Meet can be used anonymously and keeps no logs, and a Proton account isn’t even necessary to host or join meetings. Yen says this makes it “an ideal tool for dissidents and activists seeking the highest level of privacy.”
Proton Meet is available on the web, along with dedicated iOS and Android apps and desktop apps for Windows, Mac and Linux.
