When your organization is considering a secure communication and collaboration solution, which features should you look for? You want a combination of strong security and ease-of-use, which select few options provide.
Why Your Organization Needs Secure Communications and Collaboration
Security is essential for your organization. Just as your valuable data needs to be secured, so do your communications. Your employees routinely discuss matters of a sensitive nature when they communicate with others in your organization, and when they’re collaborating on group projects. The information they communicate could seriously damage your organization if it were to fall into the wrong hands – or be released publicly as part of a ransomware attack or data breach.
Consider the confidential information that subject to interference or hijacking by malicious actors eavesdropping on your company communications:
- Email addresses
- Physical addresses and phone numbers
- Passwords
- Social security numbers
- Sales performance
- Strategic plans
- Financial information
- Customer information, including financial information and telephone numbers
Then consider the risk posed by malicious actors trying to break into your communications and shared files. According to the CyberEdge Group’s Cyberthreat Defense Report, 86% of organizations surveyed were hit by successful cyberattacks in 2020. Over a third of U.S. companies were victim to ransomware attacks that held systems hostage and threatened to release sensitive communications. Protecting your communications and collaborations from this type of attack is essential.
6 Key Traits to Look For
Protecting your communications from unauthorized access requires a secure communication and collaboration solution. Before you subscribe to any single solution, however, you should consider the following six traits
1. End-to-End Encryption
All of your communications need to be encrypted, just as your data at rest is (or should be) encrypted. With end-to-end encryption, communications are encrypted at the source, stay encrypted during transit, and are only decrypted when they are opened by the intended recipients. Encrypted messages simply can’t be read or used by malicious actors. Only users with authorized access are allowed to decrypt messages addressed to them.
Look for a secure communication/collaboration platform, such as Wickr, that offers robust end-to-end encryption – and cease all official communications on less-secure platforms.
2. Zero Trust Access
You don’t need every employee having unfettered access to every communication or file in your system. In fact, the more employees who can access more things the greater the risk of your data being breached. It’s better to allow access on a “need to know” basis only – what is known as zero trust access. With zero trust, no single employee or position has universal access to everything. You can limit access to files and communications only to those who need access, thus reducing your company’s attack surface.
3. Ephemeral Messaging
Many communications platforms store old messages and communications indefinitely. This presents an unnecessary target to data thieves who can scour stored communications for sensitive information. That’s why you need a communications solution that employs ephemeral message, where messages are automatically deleted when read. Ephemeral messaging, such as Wickr’s “burn on read” functionality, ensures that no communications are stored on your company’s servers or on employees’ devices.
4. No Metadata Collection
Some communications platforms that delete old messages still store metadata about each communication. This metadata can prove useful to malicious actors, as it typically includes the identity of the sender and recipient, when the message was sent, IP address, device types, and more. For these reasons, you want a secure communications solution that either does not collect metadata or that automatically deletes metadata when a message is received.
5. Enterprise Ready
It’s important that a communications and collaboration solution can scale with your business as it grows. This rules out consumer-grade messaging solutions that simply aren’t designed to work across large enterprises. Instead, you need an enterprise-wide solution, such as Wickr Enterprise, that offers a variety of hosting and deployment options, robust group collaboration tools, and integrates with a variety of IT workflows.
6. Multi-Platform
Your communications and collaboration solution needs to work with all the different devices and platforms used by your employees. This is especially important as more and more employees are working remotely with their own personal computers, smartphones, and tablets. The ideal communications solution must be able to work across all platforms and operating systems – Windows, MacOS, Android, iOS, even Linux.
Wickr: The Ideal Secure Communications and Collaboration Solution
When you’re choosing a secure communications and collaboration solution, look no further than Wickr. The Wickr secure communications and collaboration platform includes all the essential traits you need:
- End-to-end encryption
- Zero trust access
- Ephemeral messaging
- No metadata collection
- Enterprise-ready
- Multi-platform
Wickr offers fully secure text, voice, and video communications, as well as file sharing and other collaboration tools. It is the ideal secure communications and collaboration platform for your organization.
Contact Wickr today to learn more about secure communications and collaboration for your organization.