Data protection-compliant work from home: decentralized and open source
Corona has shown: Working from home is possible in many companies. Some studies showed that more than half of the germans wished to flexibly work from home even after the current pandemic. The german Federal Minister of Labor, Hubertus Heil, even asks for a right to work from home office. It’s now in the hands of the companies to provide data protection-compilation, decentralized and open source solutions for their employees.
We advise against the usage of applications with centralized data storage, as the integrity of your data is not fully under your control. For months Zoom is making news with security issues, like only providing E2E-Encryption for text messages, but not for audio and video streams. Instead Zoom uses TLS, the transport layer security. As a result Zoom still has full access to transferred data, like video and audio data, after a conference ended. Microsoft (Teams) also got negative press about security and data protection-compliant practices. Extending to that Microsoft also collects a lot of data over standard applications without informing their users. Another problem is related to the ‚CLOUD Act’, which rules US companies to share their data to government agencies in case of investigations. Even if the location of the data storage is not in the USA itself and even if the local jurisdiction forbids the sharing of this data.
We advise against the usage of applications with centralized data storage, as the integrity of your data is not fully under your control. For months Zoom is making news with security issues, like only providing E2E-Encryption for text messages, but not for audio and video streams. Instead Zoom uses TLS, the transport layer security. As a result Zoom still has full access to transferred data, like video and audio data, after a conference ended. Microsoft (Teams) also got negative press about security and data protection-compliant practices. Extending to that Microsoft also collects a lot of data over standard applications without informing their users. Another problem is related to the ‚CLOUD Act’, which rules US companies to share their data to government agencies in case of investigations. Even if the location of the data storage is not in the USA itself and even if the local jurisdiction forbids the sharing of this data.
We introduce ideal and data proctection-compliant tools for home office, which already proved themselves worthy.
Team chat tools
- Mattermost is a fulll open-source alternative to Slack. It provides the same features like Slack: public and private chat rooms, person-to-person chat, data sharing, customizable emojis, web hooks, slash-commands and multi language support.
- Riot is a multi platform open source software for chat, IP/video calls over the matrix protocol stack, which already hosts existing communication mehtods like IRC, Slack, Twitter, Telegram and Apple iMessage.
- The group chat application Zulip is easily integrated with popular software development tools, like GitHub and Jenkins. Private and topic-based group chats, data storage of all data in a stream, private chats, status flags, data uploads, emojis and e-mail or desktop notifications are a few features of Zulip.
Your can find more information at our team chats.
Web meetings
- The open source software Jitsi can host video conferences with one or multiple participants. Beside video and audio chats Jitsi Meet also provides desktop sharing and screen sharing of specific windows to present your content to others.
- Kopano Meet is a video conference tool, which works independent from the Kopano apps. The installation doesn’t require the usage of other apps.
You can find more informations here.
Our recommendation for conferences:
BigBlueButton s a online conference system, which also suits for e-learning. The platform provides the shared use of multiple video and audio formats, a whiteboard, chat, shared notes and real-time screen sharing. Additionally lessons, lectures, seminars or presentations can be recorded.
Ask us about a selection of a suitable tool for your company or private use case - we are happy to advise you in a not binding exchange.
