Since 2014, joint management of infrastructure networks and information systems Defense (DIRISI) was looking for a secure file sharing solution for the Ministry of Armed Forces and to do so, they turned to the sovereign platform Oodrive Work. 200,000 licenses are currently deployed, compared to 50,000 in 2019 and 4,000 in 2014.
According to the Department of the Armed Forces, many public organizations and large private accounts are equipping or considering equipping platforms for secure sharing and collaboration, especially for managing the most sensitive data.
This is, for example, the case of the National Assembly, which has been using the Wimi platform for file exchange among parliamentarians for many years, as well as the Ministry of Justice.
Another example is that of Vinci Energies, which uses the NetExplorer solution to share its files externally, such as BPI France, not forgetting DGFIP, which hosts the Jalios platform in its Nubo cloud.
“Since the pandemic, we have seen this phenomenon, decision makers need secure spaces for sensitive data sometimes in a very short period of time, I have an example of an internal project that lasted six months, after the completed space was disabled, emphasizes Jérôme Flament, founder and CEO of Flexcloud.
Indeed, the health crisis, which has caused the generalization of remote work, has forced companies to rethink the way they share files and, in general, with the proliferation of hybrid and multi-cloud environments, companies are looking for flexible tools, secure and available on the move to share files, their transfer and then interact with others, internally or externally.
For his part, Lionel Roux, general manager of Wimi, who indeed sees an increase in demand, also makes another argument: “THE OIV (vital operators) i OSE (operators of basic services) have met their collaboration needs by working on location around Microsoft’s offerings, but the publisher is ending support for those solutions, allowing those same companies to look at alternative offerings.”
Platforms that are increasingly feature-rich
Furthermore, for Sylvain Lefeuvre, Head of Sales at Oodrive, the demand is very present and will even increase as companies no longer want to be limited or restricted by regulations outside the community.
“The US law, which is more demanding towards China, could indirectly limit or restrict certain French and European companies in their investments in China. As a result, the companies concerned would be more inclined to move towards sovereign and safer solutions.“, he explains.
Indeed, according to a spokesperson for the publisher, a presidential decree in the US banning the transfer of personal data to countries described as worrisome will apply entirely to Europeans and will involve a profound change in their commercial strategies and contracts.
Bolstering Donald Trump’s 2019 executive order barring certain actors from accessing sensitive technologies and materials, President Joe Biden now prohibits US actors from transferring or integrating personal information of Americans that qualifies as sensitive into a transaction.
The definition given by the presidential decree is extremely broad and includes health, financial, geolocation data and even personal identifiers. However, it is important to emphasize that we should wait for the Attorney General, who will publish the application document for this regulation by the end of August, in order to know more precisely which mechanisms are foreseen.
For this reason, Oodrive highlights its platform as a real bulwark, especially since it is currently the only collaborative solution qualified by ANSSI as SecNumCloud (see part 2).
As such, security is at the heart of the various platforms mentioned in this survey. For Alain Garnier, director of Jamespot, you have to have this cyber security culture, the publisher does not hesitate to submit its solutions to teams of hackers to evaluate them.
“This is what we do with the bug bounty to strengthen the security of our solutions, students from the school voluntarily come to attack us and the flaws that are identified, we fix them, specifies Alain Garnier.
More generally, publishers provide advanced security mechanisms such as end-to-end encryption, watermarking and digital watermarking at the core of their offerings.
And increasingly it is even possible to electronically sign documents in this secure space as, for example, Oodrive and Wimi do. “We use an eIDAS qualified Unisign signature and will also connect with Yousign, two solutions recognized by Anssi», specifies Lionel Roux in this regard.
The same applies to Oodrive, which has its own offer called Sign, also sovereign and eIDAS compliant.
Beyond these secure hubs, the platforms offered to most publishers today are enriched with functionality by adding video, email and even office automation, often relying on publishers or third-party solutions. The goal of these publishers is to position themselves as a real alternative to MS 365 and Google Workspace, covering at least 80% of user needs.
But to conquer the market, it will take much more because Microsoft and Google between them occupy about 90% of the market.