Dr. Rick Goud, Co-founder & Chief Innovation Officer at Zivver, reflects on Zivver’s new partnership with Kiteworks:
A ten-year journey. A moment of choice. A bold new chapter.
Ten years ago, we started Zivver with a mission: to make secure communication simple and accessible—without compromise. That mission has shaped every decision, every conversation, every line of code. It led us to build one of Europe’s fastest-growing cybersecurity companies. And now, it’s brought us here: the next chapter in our journey.
Today, I’m proud to share that Zivver is joining the Kiteworks Group—a global leader in secure collaboration and content communication, trusted by over 35,000 organizations. It’s a decision we didn’t take lightly. It’s also a decision we believe will shape not only our future, but the future of secure sovereign communication across Europe and beyond.
Let me take you behind the scenes of how we got here—and why this moment matters.
From small Dutch startup to trusted European security provider
We started Zivver a little over 10 years ago in a tiny office with big dreams and very little else. Just three people, an idea, and a shared frustration: why was it so hard to communicate securely? Why were the tools either too complicated or not secure enough? And why did organizations have to choose between usability and security?
We believed that secure communication didn’t have to be difficult. That belief helped us build something new. Not just secure, but genuinely intuitive. Not just compliant, but loved by users. It wasn’t easy—far from it. But our vision resonated.
Today, Zivver is trusted by over 11,000 organizations—hospitals, municipalities, ministries, courts, law firms, banks. Our platform is integrated with Microsoft and Google, supports zero-access encryption, data classification, and advanced DLP. We’ve been named a Gartner Representative Vendor for email data protection three years in a row. We are, without a doubt, a European cybersecurity success story.
The limits of growing alone
But even success has its limits. And we began to feel them.
In our ambition to scale internationally, we discovered that Europe is not one market—it’s dozens. Each country has its own regulations, procurement culture, and legacy vendors. Public sector organizations don’t scale across borders. You start over—again and again, encountering different approaches to compliance, new attitudes towards security.
In some countries we failed to be successful, others took years. The UK only started accelerating after three years of intense investment. Meanwhile, the US grew faster in 18 months than anywhere else.
At the same time, we faced the funding reality: scaling in Europe is expensive and undercapitalized. Hiring local teams, localizing products, and surviving the long public sector sales cycles—these are hard to fund from a European VC base. We were lucky to find great international investors. But we knew: for the next stage, we needed more than capital.
We needed leverage. Infrastructure. Brand recognition. And local presence in key markets. We had two options: acquire companies ourselves—or join a group that already had it all.
Why Kiteworks stood out
That’s when Kiteworks re-entered the picture.
We first met them over three years ago. Back then, they were already thinking big. They reached out to us with interest in a partnership. At the time, we declined—we weren’t ready.
But we kept watching. And what we saw impressed us.
Kiteworks built, step by step, one of the most comprehensive platforms in secure content communication. They didn’t just say the right things—they delivered. On product, on execution, and on values. Their vision was clear: to give organizations a Private Data Network—a secure, policy-controlled, sovereign environment for all sensitive content communication. Not just email. Not just file sharing. All of it. Across every vector. With full visibility and compliance.
Their platform now includes:
- Secure email (which Zivver strengthens dramatically)
- Secure file collaboration (think Dropbox/SharePoint—but sovereign)
- Secure interactive web forms
- Managed File Transfer (MFT)
- Comprehensive compliance and audit capabilities
- Flexible deployment (public cloud, private cloud, on-premise)
And they did all this while being backed by some of the world’s leading investors, including Insight Partners and Sixth Street, who in 2024 invested $456 million to accelerate this vision.
What makes this combination truly unique
Zivver and Kiteworks together are not just 1 + 1 = 2. This is an exponential leap forward.
- Breadth of Offering:
We now offer the full range of secure content communication—from a single email to multi-gigabyte file transfers, from structured form inputs to collaborative file spaces. All zero-trust. All compliant. - Deployment Flexibility:
Public sector clients in Europe increasingly demand control: where data lives, who hosts it, and how it's encrypted. With Kiteworks, we can now offer on-premise, private cloud, or public cloud. Zivver alone couldn't meet that need. Now we can. - Sovereignty by Design:
In a time when the Cloud Act, GDPR, NIS2, and geopolitical tensions are front of mind, we offer a rare combination: data protection and privacy at heart, global scale, and true sovereignty. Zero-access encryption, customer-held keys, auditability—no black boxes. - Platform Strategy for the Future:
The cybersecurity world is moving away from fragmented tools toward unified platforms. Customers don’t want 10 point solutions—they want integrated control, consistent UX, and a single audit trail. That’s exactly what we now offer. - Global Reach with Local Power:
With offices and teams in the US, UK, DACH, Eastern Europe, the Netherlands, and beyond, we now have local teams where it matters—with the global backbone to support large, complex organizations.
What this means for our customers and partners
Let me be clear: for existing Zivver customers, nothing changes—except that more is now possible.
You still get the same secure email platform, same product roadmap, same commitment to usability and compliance. But now, we can help you with more:
- On-premise or private cloud deployments
- Additional secure communication use cases
- Integrated platform options beyond email
- Faster support across more time zones
- Accelerated innovation through shared R&D
And for our team, this means growth. More opportunity, more scale, more reach. Already, we’re seeing how our engineering, product, and go-to-market teams are collaborating across borders to build something truly unique.
A platform for Europe’s digital sovereignty
This is bigger than Zivver. Bigger than Kiteworks. This is about giving European organizations—and global ones—a credible alternative to the hyperscalers. One that is built with sovereignty in mind, with compliance baked in, and with a deep commitment to responsible innovation.
We believe that if Europe wants to play a role in shaping the digital future, it needs platforms like this. Sovereign. Transparent. Powerful. And trustworthy.
What’s next?
Over the next year, we will:
- Bring Zivver’s technology into more markets, faster
- Expand our offerings to include new secure communication use cases
- Make our platform available in multiple deployment models
- Deepen integrations with Microsoft, Google, and other ecosystems
- Continue to deliver the same experience, with more capability behind it
We’re at the start of something rare: a sovereign, global-scale, mission-driven cybersecurity platform that can truly compete—and win—on the world stage.
My personal reflections
This decision was emotional. Zivver has been my life for a decade. We built it from the ground up. But rest assured, this isn’t the end and no, I am not retiring. It’s the beginning of the next chapter—with more potential than ever.
To our team: I’m endlessly proud of what we’ve built.
To our customers: thank you for trusting us.
To our partners: we’ll go further—together.
And to anyone wondering if Europe can build the future: yes, we can. But only if we dare to think bigger, partner smarter, and move faster.
Here’s to the next ten years.
— Rick
