When data protection was still a foreign word for many, Christopher Bick and Felix Ferchland founded stashcat GmbH. A highly secure business messenger for companies and authorities that advertises that it is data protection compliant and at the same time particularly user-friendly.
10 years after it was founded, stashcat belongs to the renowned secunet Security Networks AG with more than 1000 employees. A good reason for an interview with founder Christopher.
The Bundeskartellamt determined in 2020 that “end-to-end encryption is far from being the standard for all messenger providers”.
Bick: “stashcat is a pioneer when it comes to end-to-end encryption and has been offering this service since the beginning, around 2015 there was a clear market need for it. We have integrated this into our product and were the first in Europe – along with Threema – to implement this on the commercial side. Threema is a technological role model for us, but our focus is on commercial use.”
In 2016 you received a call from the Office for the Protection of the Constitution, what was your first thought?
Bick: “We thought: They want to monitor us and have an interface to read along. (laughs)
But that was nonsense. In fact, they came to see us and revealed to us that they were looking for a high-security messenger service for the Lower Saxony police force. At that time, the police sometimes communicated via their private mobile phones, which was clearly too insecure. If the police use a messenger from a US provider in a large-scale operation and create groups for this, for example, I cannot control from the top down who is the administrator and who can add others to the group. In this way, third parties – such as the press – can succeed in getting into such groups. A super meltdown that actually happened in Belgium. The Office for the Protection of the Constitution here in Germany wanted to forestall that. In addition to the Lower Saxony police force, the Hesse and Saxony-Anhalt police forces are now also using stashcat.”
What is your biggest vision for the coming years?
Bick: “We want to appear internationally. We are currently implementing the first projects in the Middle East and European security authorities have expressed great interest in stashcat. Although our core market is still in Germany, there is high demand for secure means of communication that stand out from those of US providers.
In addition, we are building up a large marketplace at stashcat so that I can get what I need every day in a one-stop shop – whether it’s a police officer or a doctor.
Be it access to the patient file or a search tool: Everything will be possible within stashcat. Our vision is that we will become the pioneers in the niche markets in which we operate.”
Read up the entire interview www.stashcat.com/blog/interview
