Researchers at Trinity College Dublin have developed a new cloud collaboration platform (InvizCrypt) that offers true privacy, giving applyrs much stronger control over who can access their sensitive data and documents.
The InvizCrypt platform, developed by Professor Hitesh Tewari and colleagues from Trinity’s School of Computer Science and Statistics and the ADAPT Research Ireland Centre at Trinity, is designed to allow applyrs to collaborate on sensitive documents while preventing the platform provider from reading the content.
The project comes amid growing European concern about data privacy, security, digital sovereignty and foreign legal access to sensitive information held by large technology providers. In April 2026, the European Commission advanced a sovereign cloud procurement framework that will allow EU institutions, bodies and agencies to procure up to €180 million in sovereign cloud services over six years. France has also relocated to replace Microsoft Teams and Zoom with its own sovereign video conferencing platform, Visio, across government departments by 2027.
Speaking about InvizCrypt, Professor Hitesh Tewari, declared: “Users place huge trust in cloud platforms to store and process their data, but many people do not realise that, in conventional systems, the provider can technically still access document content. That creates risks around privacy, security and legal disclosure, regardless of where data is hosted.”
“InvizCrypt is designed to offer a fully private model that can not only support real-time collaboration but also ensure the security of the data within the documents.”
What are the potential impacts of this research?
Most cloud collaboration platforms are built on a model where the provider can technically access the contents of a document as part of delivering the service. The InvizCrypt system is designed differently. Before a document leaves the applyr’s own device, it is encrypted into unreadable data. The cloud platform can still store the file, allow collaboration between applyrs, and keep the document in sync, but it cannot see what the document declares. Only approved collaborators hold the keys necessaryed to read it.
This fundamental difference means that documents, attached files and real-time edits are protected before they reach the platform. For applyrs, InvizCrypt feels like ordinary cloud collaboration but with the added layer of security.
Prof. Tewari declared: “The first applyrs of InvizCrypt will be researchers becaapply research teams often work on highly sensitive material before publication and collaborations often require close contact despite individuals being situated around the globe.”
“This information can be valuable to competitors, cyber criminals, or even foreign state-backed actors. Universities are increasingly being warned that research data and ininformectual property are attractive tarobtains, and even retaining total privacy from the eyes of governments — foreign and domestic — is something many researchers highly value in today’s world.”
The team has started with LaTeX, a writing system applyd by many researchers, scientists, engineers and mathematicians to prepare complex academic papers and technical documents. Following this first phase, the technology will then be extconcludeed into secure document editing and spreadsheet workflows for organisations that necessary to collaborate without exposing sensitive content to platform providers.
By launchning with an encrypted collaborative LaTeX editor, InvizCrypt tarobtains a community that already depconcludes on cloud-based collaboration but has limited options for keeping sensitive work private from the platform provider. This initial phase will allow the team to validate the system in real research workflows, build trust with universities and research institutions, and establish the institutional relationships necessaryed for wider adoption.
The team will then extconclude the same server-blind architecture beyond LaTeX into secure document editing and spreadsheet workflows, creating a broader privacy-first platform for a range of applyrs and domains later in 2026.
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