It’s hard to find anyone who has not already surrendered to the charms of cloud storage services. There is no doubt that using Dropbox or SkyDrive to store your most precious files is much more practical than resorting to retrograde CDs or USB sticks. However, in an era troubled by scandals related to data privacy and digital espionage starring government agencies, it is difficult to be sure that your documents will not end up falling into the wrong hands.

In the backdrop of NSA and Prism, users are increasingly concerned about security on their systems and devices. We are also in a scenario where we have to deal with (among other things) the malware and also with monitoring programs.  Hence, F-Secure has developed a service platform that can store all of our content, without worrying about data security and privacy. F-Secure is a Finnish company that has spent 25 years developing software to protect our computers, offering programs that are among the best rated in the market.

F-Secure announced its own cloud storage service called “Younited”, and the Finnish security vendor advertises the service as an alternative to offerings provided by Google Drive or Microsoft SkyDrive. It is mainly the operation out in Finland by a Finnish company. The service, which has the intention to centralize all your important files in a more secure also marks a major shift in the marketing strategy of the European company, which previously worked in marketing solutions for other companies.

“It is high time for a fresh alternative from Europe goes into the market, which is one step ahead of the currently established Internet giants,” said Mikko Hypponen, chief research officer at F-Secure. “What the world needs now is a cloud storage service, which is not at the mercy of uncontrolled access by intelligence agencies.”

Everything you need in one place

F-secure provides an engaging experience through a service that people can trust to protect files, photos, videos, among others, without running the risk of being spied on or that your information will be used for purposes of advertising or marketing.

With official apps for almost all operating systems market (Windows, Mac, Windows Phone 8, Android and iOS), the Younited offer 10 GB free for those who sign up on the site later this year. The plan will entitle only free 5 GB of storage space for photos, videos, music and any other type of document you want to save. Who wants more space may contract a license Medium (200 GB for €74 a year) or Premium (500 GB for €120 per year).

One of the great advantages of the service is its ability to sync with social networks and other remote storage apps like Facebook, Picasa and Dropbox. Thus, it is possible to export all contents of these sites and let them centralized in one place, allowing you to always have access to your most important files regardless of the device used. Like other similar apps, the Younited allow users to share data with your friends or professional teams, including being viable for collaborative work.

“We consider existing personal cloud services to be mostly boring, 90’s look-and-feel file utilities that are used only occasionally. We want to change that,” says Timo Laaksonen, Vice President at F-Secure Corporation. “What you see in younited today is already compelling but it’s only the beginning. A number of new service capabilities are in the works that will add further excitement to the user experience. For instance, we will soon launch a completely new, dead-easy and fun way to share pictures and videos from events with friends and family.”

Building Security In

The personal cloud services are based on trust, however, it has deteriorated over the past year as a result of a multitude of signals alarming reports spreading malware using cloud services personal questioning methods used by intelligence agencies to spy and access data online citizens, the use of stored information for commercial purposes such as new products or selling personal data.

All content uploads to younited are done over a secure web connection using AES-256 encryption method, similar to internet banking. When you upload content to younited, it is stored in a password protected reliable, encrypted storage system that is designed to keep redundant copies of the content, in case of disk failure.

F-secure scans uploaded content for viruses and encrypts the uploaded files, and give each file a unique, non-descript file name, before storing the files in redundant storage system. The file name and other metadata are stored in a clustered database, separated from the actual file storage.

Being back in Finland, the cloud storage service is governed under strict privacy laws and privacy cultural values deeply rooted in society, so it has been designed and constructed to ensure this from the beginning. It is also designed for security professionals who have built up from the architecture to the forms of work Younited. The promise of this new service is that users keep control of their data, with experts advocating its content daily to prevent data loss, malware, unauthorized access of third parties and other threats.

Seeking safety in information in the cloud, F-Secure said thousands of consumers and SMEs have already signed on Younited before the official release. This shows the search to find an alternative market to find a service that guarantees the privacy of the information that used for commercial purposes.