Privacy with Cryptomator End to end cloud by Christian Schmickler and Markus Kreusch
0Android Security Symposium 2017
#hacking, #hackers, #infosec, #opsec, #IT, #android #security
The data has now become gasoline to run almost everything online, the demand for cloud data management is increasing exponentially.
However, these cloud-centric databases face the music in the form of data privacy concerns. Moreover, the data stored in the cloud contain confidential and personal information of individuals that, if shared publicly or get into the wrong hands can become a nightmare for user privacy.
Online data security is the key maintain the privacy of users. “Skymatic” develops a cloud encryption solution Cryptomator that ensures ultimate protection to address this issue.
We are thankful to Mr. Christian Schmickler, Managing Partner at Skymatic, for his precious time to discuss how Cryptomator software works and to ensure your data protection.
So without wasting any time let’s dig into the answers given by Mr. Christian Schmickler regarding how Cryptomator is an essential software in improving your online privacy.
Q1. Your Introduction at “Cryptomator”?
Yeah, well as you probably know that the main product, Cryptomator is out there from 2016, it is simply a program and an App that encrypts files on a user’s device, which can be a mobile phone or tablet, a computer or the client. So this is client side encryption or is known as end to end encryption.
The idea behind Cryptomator is to build a cloud based encryption solution that serves all kind of user and has no previous technical knowledge or advanced computing skills. We develop a software that is user friendly and easy to use as much possible and another factor that is very important for us is transparency to give people confidence in what we say that we do. So the open source aspect that was included in the basic version of Cryptomator.
Q2. As the Cryptomator technology is a bit advanced technology for the beginners, so how can you explain it in simple terms for those who have zero knowledge about encryption.
Well it’s a simple installation routine. If you’re on a computer then you just download the Java application, normal file or if you are downloaded from the IOS, from the App store or the Android, Google play store, you know the correct word there I guess. Yeah, you can just download this app from the very basic interface. You create so called the bowl (destination folder) then you Choose a path forward for a bowl that you have just created and then even a baby can use this file system it’s a drag and drop and any time you store file it got encrypted automatically.
As your audience consists mainly of non-technical people, who have concerns about online privacy but are relatively new or unknown on the technical aspects of it. Then the best way to explain our product is meant to provide online privacy within other products with the combination of Dropbox or Google drive.
Q3. What was the core idea/reason for establishing this project?
Our, my Co-founder Sebastian Stenzel you can find more about him at Skymatic website. He is an engineer and he realized that there are some flaws in cloud storage out there, and the main area of privacy is not really covered by the available offerings.
As in clouds you never know is it just another computer or another company’s computer. Can you trust them yet no. At then he was looking for solutions, to save these file in an encrypted manner and the available solutions of that time either not user friendly or not really trust worthy because they are neither open source nor their architecture is as convincing on privacy.
Sebastian started Cryptomator as the side project and begin writing first line of code and in the beginning of 2014 the first GitHub project was launched. Then some of his friends joined him. I joined the team in the beginning of 2016. At that time it became clear that it is time to transform this into a business model or a whole business projects so that’s how it’s all started. The idea is to sell Cryptomator app in order to provide a way for protecting user privacy.
But why didn’t it work extensively? Because people are not willing to pay any money in order to protect their privacy. It’s just very small niche markets out there of people that have very much knowledge of the digital world, and are very close to computers and everything you got to do with computers.
We tried to design Cryptomator to make it easy that everybody can use it. Ninety eight percent of our twitter followers, which is more than 3000 now, are male and only few of them understand the real meaning of privacy. Subject is technology, cryptography, and how to use it to enable user’s privacy. We have an audience now that was able to do encryption way before Cryptomator ever existed. So Cryptomator supposed to have all the other people in particular and it’s obvious no body is interested in that.