In everyday life, we constantly use instant messengers and other applications for mobile communication. However, when it comes to work, all discussions are conducted only by email, phone, or at personal business meetings. It seems from the outside that government agencies are especially scrupulous in this issue since they often work with sensitive information and therefore have special requirements and standards for its protection.
WhatsApp as a Market Leader
WhatsApp has been and remains an example for all other messengers with no doubt. In the European Commission (EC), the expression “WhatsApp diplomacy” has even appeared. With the help of this WhatsApp diplomacy, a part of the negotiations on Brexit took place. However, in February 2020, the EC recommended its employees switch to another messenger – Signal. Precisely because of doubts about the sufficient security of WhatsApp.
Indeed, despite the end-to-end encryption, which allows only the sender and recipient to see a message, the Israeli security firm NGO Group managed to develop a program that hacked the WhatsApp account of Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos. This is a good reason to review the standards for secure communication.
What Messenger Should Your Company Use?
So, what is the difference between Signal messenger and competitors? First, it is not a commercial product. Signal was developed by data protection activists and IT security experts. Therefore, the program code of this messenger is available online in the Open-Source format and is constantly being improved by programmers.
In addition, for more than a year Signal has been working on the principle of a “sealed sender” thanks to which the so-called metadata of a message, that is, information about who sent it, when and to whom, is protected. In addition, Signal, according to its own data, does not store the IP address of the sender of the message.
The Threema application works similarly: using the principle of end-to-end encryption and keeping the metadata in secret. At the same time, when registering, the user does not even need to create a profile with a phone number or email address. Instead, it is assigned an anonymous identification number (ID). Threema, unlike the Signal messenger, is not open-source software.
New Fashion: Own It-developments
At the same time, government agencies, just like private users, have an excellent alternative to instant messengers available on the market. After all, they can order communication applications developed specifically for them. It seems that this is becoming the main trend now. The same European Commission, which recommended its employees to switch to the Signal messenger in February 2020, is already working on creating its own messenger.
The German government also announced at the end of March, in response to a request from journalists, that employees of the Office of the Chancellor during the coronavirus pandemic began using a communication application developed for them by Wire in a test mode.
So, which messenger is 100% reliable and secure? The answer to this question is very simple: there is no such messenger. Instead, there are only advantages and disadvantages of individual products.
