Your organization’s IT security team is responsible for protecting your company’s data from hacking and cyber theft. Security teams, today, employ data encryption, firewalls, artificial intelligence, and other security tools to protect against malicious intrusion and attack.
Today’s top security teams also realize that a company’s communications are uniquely vulnerable to outside attack. To best protect a company’s sensitive communications, security teams employ enterprise messaging solutions that include end-to-end encryption technology.
Wickr has become one of the most popular encrypted messaging solutions in the corporate environment. Below are just some of the ways that corporate IT security teams are leveraging Wickr to ensure data encryption throughout their organization.
Enforcing a Single Enterprise-Wide Messaging Solution
To effectively protect corporate communications, all communications must be run through a single secure messaging solution. Using different messaging tools for different types of communications, or in different locations, leaves too many gaps that can be exploited by malicious actors. The best security teams know that a single secure messaging solution, such as Wickr Enterprise, will best protect the company’s communications.
Of course, this means banning employee use of non-approved messaging apps – especially consumer apps. Any weak link can and will be exploited by cyber intruders, and there are no weaker links than the consumer apps installed on employees’ personal phones. There is a reason that Appthority reports that such apps as Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp are among the most blacklisted apps in corporate environments – these apps are uniquely insecure and vulnerable to hacking.
While it’s tempting for employees in a BYOD environment to use the messaging and chat apps that are installed on their personal phones, the use of these apps for any company-related communications must be discouraged. Alternately, security teams can closely monitor the use of such apps by employing a Mobile Device Management (MDM) platform. (Security teams appreciate that Wickr Enterprise easily links to most MDM solutions.)
Encrypting All Messaging on All Platforms
Security teams must protect all forms of company communication, not just text messaging. Voice calls, video chats, and text messages all are more secure when treated with the end-to-end encryption that is provided by Wickr Enterprise. When all corporate communications are protected by the same encrypted solution, nothing can slip through the cracks and into the hands of malicious actors.
In Ovum’s Secure Messaging Survey 2017, companies rated voice calls, video calls, and end-to-end encryption as the most desirable features in a secure mobile messaging app. Wickr offers all of these features and more.
Wickr Enterprise not only protects voice, video, and messaging, it also encrypts media and other files that are transmitted through the corporate environment. In addition, all Wickr enables encrypted group collaboration and screen sharing. Security teams appreciate that, no matter how your employees communicate and collaborate, Wickr is there to protect their work.
Employing Burn on Read Technology
Encrypting messaging is only part of communications security. Security teams must also deal with messages after they’ve been transmitted.
Many communications solutions store read messages on the organization’s servers, either in-house or in the cloud. While this is useful for searching and retrieving old messages, it presents an elevated security risk – no matter how strong a company’s data security, any stored messages can be hacked.
The only way to ensure that historical communications are completely secure is to delete them. If the messages no longer exist, they can’t be stolen.
For this reason, Wickr offers user-defined, burn-on-read settings for all of its encrypted messages. Security teams can configure Wickr’s Auto Destruct settings to determine just what is done with communications once they are sent. Depending on the organization’s security profile, messages can be immediately deleted, stored for a set period of time, or stored indefinitely. Obviously, the safest approach is to automatically delete all messages when read, but that’s a decision every team can make for their specific company.
Shredding Deleted Data
Security teams and hackers alike know that data is not necessarily gone when deleted. Given the right tools, deleted data can be recovered. In terms of data security, this is not a good thing.
To reduce the risk of deleted messaging data being recovered by malicious parties, Wickr Enterprise includes Secure Shredder functionality that immediately overwrites deleted messages and communications. Wickr’s Secure Shredder runs whenever the Wickr app is running, “sanitizing” deleted data on a best-effort basis.
Using Wickr’s Smart VPN
It’s one thing to secure communications within a private network in a single facility, but it’s another thing to secure communications across multiple locations, even in multiple countries.
Security teams in large multi-location organizations, or with traveling or work-from-home employees and freelancers, recognize the importance of isolating corporate communications across a Virtual Private Network (VPN). VPNs extend the benefits of a private network across public networks, enabling users to securely send files and messages as if they were directly connected to the private corporate network. There’s a reason why the number of VPN users grew 165 percent from 2017 to 2018
Messaging via VPN is infinitely more secure than messaging via the Internet, which is why Wickr Enterprise includes the Wickr Open Access (WOA) “smart” VPN. WOA provides a secure, end-to-end encrypted connection for individuals, teams, and enterprises that are using the Wickr app, even in less-than-secure environments.
The WOA VPN incorporates multiple technologies and thousands of servers across the world to ensure that the best connection is always used and that communications are always securely encrypted. WOA secures file transfers, text messaging, and voice/video calls for users and teams in any location.
Wickr: The Secure Messaging Solution
Security teams in organizations of all sizes know how important it is to choose the right encrypted messaging solution – this is why more and more teams are employing Wickr’s end-to-end encrypted messaging solutions. Contact us to learn more about how Wickr can be part of your team’s security strategy.
To improve your security team’s performance, download Wickr today!