Changing the game in Secure Workspace solutions - Wire Cells

What do you picture when you think of highly secure software?

Multi-factor logins, forced log-outs, frequent password changes, and constant changing from app to app for every task – sounds right. What you don’t think of is ease of use and productivity! Even mainstream workspace solutions (who claim to be secure, but we all know aren’t) don’t always provide a seamless experience, forcing you to move back and forth between separate application spaces within the solution rather than letting you just get your work done from a single pane of glass. And for the secure workspace sector, that experience is frequently even less user-friendly. 

Wire Cells is poised to change that (don’t know what Wire Cells is, you can learn more here).

What exactly is a “Secure Workspace Solution”

Before diving in, let’s make sure we’re all on the same page about what a secure workspace solution actually is. According to Google, a secure workspace solution is “a system or interconnected systems that provide secure access to corporate applications and data, enabling employees to work from anywhere while ensuring security, operational efficiency, and scalability.” That sounds just about right to us.

We all know that mainstream workspace solutions, like GSuite, MS Teams, the Atlassian suite of tools (Confluence, Jira, etc.), and Slack et al., all fit the definition of workspace solutions. For this blog post, we’re discussing a much less well-known ecosystem of security-first workspace solutions like Reemo, SSH and Egress. We’re not pointing the finger at any of these solutions; we’re only naming them to give some context about what we mean when we say “secure workspace solution”.

When security gets in the way of useability

If you’ve worked in defence, government, law enforcement, finance, legal, life sciences or any other sector where secure productivity and collaboration tools are the norm, you’ve probably experienced what we call “the tradeoff”. It’s long been accepted that secure workspace solutions often offer a less than seamless user experience due to their focus on stringent security measures. That’s “the tradeoff”.

Here are 6 factors that typically drive poor user experience in secure software and how Wire Cells will help redefine what users expect from a secure workspace solution.

1. Strict access controls, like frequent multi-factor authentication and granular permissions, can slow workflows and create bottlenecks by requiring frequent approvals for resource access.
   • Wire Cells: Strict access control, granular permissions, and end-to-end encryption are all there, but they're nearly invisible to end users. We’re serious about security, but we’re equally committed to making sure that security stays firmly behind the scenes.
2. User interface complexity due to security-first designs that prioritize compliance often leads to complex, unintuitive interfaces.
   • Wire Cells: We’re serious about security, but we’re also obsessed with useability. Great UX is non-negotiable because the harder a piece of software is to master, the fewer people will use it.
3. Steep learning curves aren’t unusual for secure solutions, often requiring extensive training. Add non-intuitive security policies to that, and you’ve got a difficult-to-use platform.
   • Wire Cells: Ease-of-use, intuitiveness, and a shallow learning curve are other side effects of our obsession with UX. We really care about creating software that just works!
4. Performance overhead (sluggish performance) from end-to-end encryption and secure communication protocols can introduce latency, while sandboxing to prevent malware or data leakage can further reduce application speed and responsiveness.
   • Wire Cells: By leveraging the power of the Wire messaging system and Cells' real-time collaboration capabilities, Wire Cells is built to offer super-low latency communications and collaboration, meaning no more performance overhead.
5. Workflow interruptions occur when features like file sharing, offline access, or copy-paste are disabled to prevent data leakage. Frequent session timeouts or strict device policies also disrupt users who need uninterrupted access.
   • Wire Cells: We eliminate productivity killers like session timeouts, building our security in from the ground up and making it near invisible to end users rather than interrupting your workflow and slowing you down with constant security checks.
6. Limited device flexibility in secure workspaces stems from restrictions on BYOD and reliance on approved devices or virtual desktops, and advanced monitoring tools can slow performance, particularly on personal or older devices.
   • Wire Cells: We bring secure communication and collaboration to all modern devices on all major platforms (IOS, OSX, Android, F-Droid, and Windows) via our desktop and mobile apps.

A New Way to Work

Wire Cells will be the world’s first unified, secure workspace solution that takes productivity as seriously as it takes security. With Wire Cells, no more team chat in one app, then switching to another app for partner calls and then having to use a third app to share documents outside the organization and yet another for collaborating on a document. Wire Cells will allow the typical worker to do 80% or more of their daily tasks from the same interface.

Changing the game

For today, we’re talking about the power of working from a single interface. But our vision for Wire Cells goes much further than that. The unified platform will soon allow access to related information more efficiently, allowing for quick, powerful searches spanning chat, documents and images. In the knowledge economy, giving users access to that kind of global view of the wealth of expertise your organization generates daily will drive efficiency, productivity, and creativity.

Automation made easy

Wire Cells will also soon allow organizations to implement sophisticated no-code/low-code workflows to enable you to streamline and, in some cases, even fully automate repetitive and time-consuming tasks like document review and approval cycles, automatically assigning or unassigning permissions to groups of users based on external events (like a project start date), and even collecting and formatting data of compliance reporting. And that’s really just the start.

Want to take a deeper dive into the vision behind Wire Cells? Watch our CEO, Benjamin Schilz, and Pydio founder, Charles du Jeu, discuss the vision for Wire Cells.

Wire Cells is nearly here

Wire Cells will allow global teams to communicate securely and seamlessly, including text, voice, and video calls (including large group calls). They’ll also be able to share, manage, and collaborate on documents in real time, automate repetitive tasks, and even transfer files up to 5 terabytes.

We’ll be launching the Alpha version of Wire Cells in Q1 2025 via a Lighthouse Customer program, and inviting select customers and partners to participate. If you’re interested in participating, just drop us a line.