As Disney ditches the productivity platform following a data breach, the UK-based open-source tool Matrix prepares to step up with a bold claim: that

TechScape: Meet the scrappy tech company taking on Slack

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2024-09-24 17:00:07

As Disney ditches the productivity platform following a data breach, the UK-based open-source tool Matrix prepares to step up with a bold claim: that it’s hack-proof. Is mainstream tech ready for it?

N ever say we don’t take you anywhere with these newsletters. I write this from the departure lounge at Berlin Brandenburg airport, where I can recommend its simulacrum of fish and chips but cannot recommend its security line (seriously, queue up early).

I’m here for a conference run by a tech company you’ve never heard of that makes a technology you’ve never used: Matrix. That’ll become important later.

Single points of failure are a big issue in tech. Whether it’s the chaos when cybersecurity company CrowdStrike pushed out a wonky update to millions of users in July, or the frustration when Netflix goes down, it’s increasingly common to discover just how reliant we are on a handful of companies.

The House of Mouse has had enough with Slack, the company announced internally last week. It follows a July data breach, orchestrated by a group protesting the rise of AI-generated art, that made public all 44m messages, 13,000 pdfs and even more spreadsheets. It was a hugely embarrassing moment for the company, and even worse for the point of failure: Slack.