The company introduces new collaborative document features within Proton Drive, extending its brand's security focus to another key productivity tool for both information workers and individuals alike.
Proton promotes the Docs suite in Proton Drive as a secure, privacy-focused alternative to Google Docs, emphasizing that competing products lack Proton’s leading zero-knowledge architecture.
In a blog post, the company wrote: "This addition to Proton’s privacy-focused product suite provides a strong alternative to existing document editors like Google Docs, ensuring that privacy and security are paramount without compromising essential features." End-to-end encryption refers to a technical architecture where the entity providing the software cannot access user content because it does not hold the encryption keys.
This allows the company to offer a privacy guarantee that clearly differentiates it from data-driven business models, such as Google's.
Proton confirmed that Docs provides the same level of encryption as Proton Drive, meaning that all content is protected with end-to-end encryption, including changes and keystrokes, as well as file names and paths.
The company stated: "Creating collaborative documents that maintain end-to-end encryption has been extremely challenging, something we have not seen anyone else do in the market. This includes synchronized keys and essential information, as well as the ability to invite people to collaborate and revoke those permissions, and share documents privately." Collaborative features include the ability to add and respond to comments, see who else is viewing a document in real-time using collaborative indicators, and support for invitations to collaborate on documents.
Users can access the new document features for free through Proton Drive, which provides up to 5GB of free storage
Beyond this limit, users wishing to take advantage of the document capabilities need to upgrade to the paid tier of Drive.