Wire, the secure messaging platform from Berlin, joins industry heavyweights like Google, Meta and Qualcomm in a new initiative aimed at unleashing innovation through open digital ecosystems. Named ‘Coalition for Open Digital Ecosystems’ (CODE), the group will work with actors from academia, policymakers and other companies with an initial focus on the implementation of the EUs ‘Digital Markets Acts’ (DMA).
Earlier this year, we relaunched our Android-App on a completely new codebase and switched to a new underlying development framework to enhance stability, performance, and security for our users. Due to this step, some features had to be removed for a while – but they are all coming back.
Sascha, what does secure communication mean to you personally? That’s a great question. In my perspective, first and foremost the assurance of impartial communication. sharing pictures of my son with my family without any repercussions to him. Joking with longtime friends without being held publicly accountable for it later. We live in a relatively safe society with high standards for privacy and rule of law.
At Wire, we believe that privacy and security are fundamental values – and that they should be protected, without any hesitation. This is why we collect as little data as possible – and strictly only collect information that we need to provide our services to you. Our headquarter is located in Berlin, Germany and almost all of our development takes place here. This means that we are regulated under the GDPR when it comes to the usage of personal information.
The rise in data breaches and cyber threats has made organizations increasingly aware of the need for more secure communication. With traditional communication methods such as regular cell service, email, instant messaging, or social media leaving sensitive information vulnerable, organizations want solutions that make privacy and security their prime concern. End-to-end encryption offers a solution to this growing concern.
After years of intense standards development, the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) officially published today Messaging Layer Security (MLS) as RFC 9420. MLS is the first global open standard for end-to-end encrypted communications and has been jointly developed by industry peers and academic institutions. Wire was an initiator of MLS in 2016 and has been a key contributor ever since.
Just recently, we have relaunched Wire for Android on a completely new code base. This brings a lot of improvements, especially better performance in the app, seamless notifications, and much better reliability. But even more important: The release will allow us to deploy features much faster in the future and brings better modularity to the development process. This approach comes with some compromises, though. We had to disable a few features that are loved by many of our users.
Led by investors Cipio Partners and Iconical, this funding round will fuel the company’s ability to further develop its industry-leading solution for mission-critical secure collaboration.
One of our promises at Wire is to provide the most secure and user friendly communications platform. Today, we’re proud to announce the first phase in our latest efforts to bring data privacy to a broader group of people through accessibility improvements to our UI. We love user feedback, and these improvements were partially inspired by our users’ inputs and our commitment to following accessibility standards.