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End-to-end encrypted messaging platform Wire<\/a> is targeting Slack\u2019s territory with a new messaging for teams product, called\u00a0Teams<\/a>.<\/p>\n It announced a\u00a0beta<\/a>\u00a0launch yesterday, and is offering teams a 30-day free trial \u2014 with pricing starting at\u00a0\u20ac5 per user per month thereafter, or custom pricing for enterprise installations offering extras such as self-hosted servers and an integration API.<\/p>\n Co-founder Alan Duric tells TechCrunch that demand for the team messaging launch is being driven \u201cprimarily\u201d by Wire\u2019s existing user base.<\/p>\n Alex, a TC reader and Wire user who tipped us to the beta launch, is one of those existing users with an interest in the new team messaging feature \u2014 although he says his team won\u2019t be signing up until the product exits beta.<\/p>\n Explaining how his team originally started using Wire, Alex says: \u201cOne of the team was traveling and visited China where we found the firewall was blocking basically everything. Skype would randomly keep crashing \/ lagging under a VPN, though Wire simply worked there. We decided just to stick with it.\u201d<\/p>\n The Wire Teams product supports logging in with multiple accounts, so users can maintain a personal Wire messaging account separate from a Wire work account, for example.<\/p>\n There\u2019s also support for adding guests to projects to allow for collaboration with outsiders who don\u2019t have full Wire accounts of their own.<\/p>\n And, in future, Teams users will be able to switch off notifications for different accounts \u2014 so they could turn off work alerts for the weekend, for example.<\/p>\n \u201cMore and more businesses and international organizations have started using Wire for work since we launched end-to-end encryption. Teams make it easy to organize work groups and related conversations,\u201d it writes in a blog post<\/a> announcing the beta.<\/p>\n While the company started by offering a more general comms app<\/a>, launched in late 2014 and backed by\u00a0Skype co-founder Janus Friis, in recent years it\u2019s shifted emphasis to focus on privacy \u2014 rolling out end-to-end encryption in March last year \u2014 perhaps calculating this makes for a better differentiator in the crowded messaging platform space.<\/p>\n When it comes to team messaging, services offering end-to-end encryption are certainly a relative rarity.\u00a0Slack\u2019s data request policy<\/a>, for example, notes that it will turn over customer data \u201cin response to valid and binding compulsory legal process\u201d.<\/p>\n In its blog<\/a> about Teams, Wire includes a comparison graphic across a range of team comms products and messaging apps, such as Slack, Skype for business, WhatsApp and Signal, which shows its commercial positioning and marketing at work.<\/p>\n As well as flagging as a plus its use of e2e encryption \u2014 which extends to securing features such as group calls, screen-sharing and file sharing \u2014 other differentiating advantages it\u2019s claiming include its business having a European base (specifically it\u2019s based in Switzerland, which has a legal regime that\u2019s generally perceived as offering some of the most robust data protection and privacy laws in Europe); and its code being open sourced (unlike, for example, the Facebook-owned WhatsApp messaging platform).<\/p>\n Wire also suggests e2e encryption for team messaging could be a way for companies to ensure compliance with incoming European privacy legislation. The General Data Protection Regulation<\/a>, which ramps up fines for data breaches, is due to come into force in May next year.<\/p>\n \u201cBusinesses affected by the EU\u2019s upcoming GDPR rules benefit from end-to-end encryption, as it automatically protects the data they share with the team from third party access,\u201d Wire claims.<\/p>\n Earlier this year the company\u00a0published an external audit of its e2e encryption<\/a>. This\u00a0uncovered some flaws and issues but generally found the reviewed components to have a \u201chigh security\u201d.<\/p>\n Although a third layer of security review \u2014 to consider Wire\u2019s complete solution in the round \u2014 remained outstanding at that point.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/rsoftsolution.com\/blog\/wp-content\/plugins\/RSSPoster_PRO\/cache\/4bd6e_wire-teams-hero-2.jpg?resize=640%2C361&ssl=1\")
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