Founded about nine years ago, Proton initially focused on a Gmail alternative called Proton Mail, but the company has expanded its horizons to include VPN, password management, calendaring and, cloud storage.

Last September, Proton debuted Proton Drive on the web, followed by mobile apps in December and Windows in July.

Proton Drive is now fully cross-platform, with users able to sync everything across all the devices they use.

Certainly! Proton Drive offers automatic full encryption for files and folders by default. Unlike Apple’s recent introduction of end-to-end encryption for certain iCloud data, which requires manual activation by users, Proton Drive ensures full encryption across all data, including metadata and file names, from the outset.

As for storage, Proton Drive provides 1GB for free, and users can opt for paid plans starting at $4 per month, which includes 200GB of storage and additional features. These features encompass the capability to automatically archive previous file versions for a period of up to 10 years.

Currently, Proton Drive for Mac exclusively synchronizes files to the cloud from the designated Proton Drive folder. However, Proton is actively developing the capability to extend synchronization to any local folder.

While Proton has a history of open-sourcing most of its applications, allowing third parties like security researchers to scrutinize the underlying code, the Proton Drive Mac app has not yet followed suit. The company assures that open-sourcing will be implemented in due course.

As for Linux users, Proton has indicated that eventual open-sourcing is part of its long-term roadmap, though a specific timeline has not been provided.

John Gruszczyk, who is a technical product marketing manager at Microsoft commented: “Multiple enterprise customers in the US and Europe across industries such as aerospace, manufacturing, telecommunications, and professional services are in the process of rolling out E2EE for Teams calls”.

The company explained that the new feature will have to be configured by the IT department of a certain organization. After that, the IT department will be provided with the option to enable the feature only for selected users. Then all the users who already are selected, will be able to enable or disable the feature from settings.

Е2ЕЕ is available only for unscheduled one-to-one calls. Both users will be required to enable it for the call to be encrypted. The video and voice data will flow between two users and is encrypted via E2EE. The text chat, file sharing, presence, and other content in the call will be encrypted in Microsoft 365.

However, users will not be able to record their calls with live captions and transcription also turned off. Also, the function of transferring calls from one device to another, will also be unavailable.

Two months ago, the company announced a preview of the new update and revealed that it will be available for Windows and Mac users.

Last year the company rolled out the new Messenger experience on Instagram which allows cross-platform messaging for users with the intention to create a unified messaging system across all its platforms.

Although messages sent through Messenger and Instagram can be end-to-end encrypted, we need to say that the option is not turned on by default. According to a Guardian report, E2EE will not arrive before 2023.

The head of safety at Meta – Antigone Davis, announced that the encryption process would happen in 2023. He had attributed the delay to the company’s efforts “to get this right.” Davis wrote as quoted by the report:

“We don’t plan to finish the global roll-out of end-to-end encryption by default across all our messaging services until sometime in 2023.”

Previously, the company had said E2EE will arrive for Messenger and Instagram Direct “sometime in 2022 at the earliest.” Meta said in a blog post earlier this year:

“We’re also working hard to bring default end-to-end encryption to all of our messaging services. This will protect people’s private messages and mean only the sender and recipient, not even us, can access their messages. While we expect to make more progress on default end-to-end encryption for Messenger and Instagram Direct this year, it’s a long-term project and we won’t be fully end-to-end encrypted until sometime in 2022 at the earliest.”

Also, the report that the social media major is also planning to combine the infrastructure of Messenger, Instagram Direct and WhatsApp.