Remember all the buzz that circulated when Iranian hackers hacked the U.S government website in January this year? The website, for almost a week, displayed an edited photo of president Donald Trump being punched in the jaw.
You probably have heard about how Chinese hackers, in a time period of 5 days, made 44,000 attempts to hack Indian banking and IT websites – this news came in July this year when the India-China conflict was at an all-time high.
Now it’s incidents like these that tell you how, when it comes to cyber attacks, a nation’s security is often exposed to imminent risk of disaster. A government website, app, or any data-centric platform for that matter, is definitely susceptible to cyberattacks – especially if they’ve conflicts with its rivals or other neighbouring countries.
Furthermore, the gradual shift in balance of power among different continents or countries has introduced many security concerns over the last few years. Even though a country’s military and economic profile might have strengthened, the interstate and intrastate security challenges haven’t yet dropped in numbers or strength.
Take a look at some of the government data-breach news caused by hackers all around the world:
- US Government Website Hacked With Pro-Iran Messages
- Thousands of Canadian Websites hacked through Cyberattacks
- UK government websites shut down as Hackers hijack thousands of them to mine Bitcoin
- China, Pakistan lead cyber attacks against India, over 1 lakh websites hacked since 2015
- Hackers linked to Pakistan have been posing as the Indian government to send emails containing malware to victims, mostly Indians.
- Japanese PM’s website hacked by whaling protesters
One look at such news is enough to warn government agencies about the danger that lurks behind such malicious activities. Many businesses and website owners have already lost millions because of data theft. And the state government, federal agencies, or any regulatory body is thus willing to take all security measures to prevent such malicious access.
In this context, it is worth considering how government or regulatory bodies can interact and share information within a secure platform. Today where most of the information is exchanged remotely, a country’s efforts to revamp and restructure its internal communication in response to security challenges are characterised by a quest to find a secure chat app.
Secure Data Exchange – Why is it Important?
Government agencies, employees, businesses and professionals today continuously consume, create, and share data in all forms – documents, spreadsheets, images, text, and presentations – they’ve all become integral parts of business activities.
Majority of these files are stored on personal computers, desktops, mobile phones, cloud, or business file servers. And hackers, over the years, have found different ways of gaining access to each of these storage systems. Thus, it is important for data-sensitive and compliance minded organisations to take state-of-the-art security systems while storing and exchanging them over the internet.
Data security is pivotal for most government agencies, military organisations, compliance-minded businesses at the same time. Customer’s files, payment information, bank account details, client information – all this information is dangerous and could be tough to replace in case they land into the hands of unscrupulous people.
Losing business data, regulatory files, or official documents to malware infections or cyber criminals could have greater consequences. Hence, the solution to both these kinds of threats is a secure data exchange.
Today businesses are operating in a highly competitive atmosphere and hence they are bound to experience manifold security threats. These businesses thus require a secure file sharing or information exchange platform for protecting their confidential business-critical data.
A secure communication platform where employees and other stakeholders can interact and exchange data securely and efficiently (irrespective of the file size, format, complexity, and transfer volume) is the need of the hour.
An app/software that allows secure chat and file sharing can offer the following benefits:
- Automated process: A secure communication app allows businesses to share files and collaborate in real-time. Using the robust file transfer automation system, employees and team members save time as it reduces reliance on manual file transfers and ensures accuracy.
- Data security: When an in transit or at rest data is left unguarded, it becomes an easy target for hackers, inviting many intruders and cyber criminals to gain unauthorised access. However, when a chat app is built with secure file exchange protocols, it encrypts data in both forms (at rest and in transit). Thus, helps avoid data breaches and also safeguards confidential information.
- Compliance: Compliance-minded organisations have to follow all government regulated compliance to protect customer data at all cost. A lot of companies struggle to keep their consumer data safe and many also fail to meet industry standards such as GDPR, HIPAA, SOX, PCI, HITECH, and more. A secure team chat app with file sharing features helps a business maintain compliance a lot easier since it offers both the security monitoring and compliance controls.
How Troop Messenger Helps Government?
Troop Messenger, as an instant team chat app, offers businesses a top-notch secure communication and file sharing solution – making their client able to share, store, and collaborate safely and securely over the internet.
- You Control Your Data
What makes Troop Messenger a perfect app for secure chat is the users are the boss of their data. They choose where to keep what. In other words, customers decide if they want to opt for cloud delivery or self-host on your own server.
Teams on Troop can keep all chat history and communication records at their own account without any eavesdropping. They have the right to access any data at any point of time because it’s located in their own server.
- Air-Gapped Server
With Troop Messenger, you get the benefit of interacting with your team members in a highly-secure environment. Since the app can be “air-gapped” in a client’s private network, there’s an additional level of firewall to enhance security standards.
- End-to-End Chat encryption of chats
Checking another box for best security standards, Troop Messenger also has the features to encrypt your chats end-to-end. The E2E encryption allows only chat participants to decrypt and read message content. Moreover, chat data is encrypted both in transit and at rest.
- Additional Levels of security
With Troop Messenger, you get an additional level of security to further strengthen your privacy and sensitive data access. The app offers three-level enterprise grade security with features such as finger-print, passcode, and user credentials.
- Confidential Chat Window
Want to have a private chat with one of your team members, without worrying about data getting stored on the server or information trespass? Take a look at Troop Messenger’s Burnout feature – where you get to chat with your preferred contact, in a confidential chat window, that expires after a stipulated time (set by you). The best part? Your chat will never be stored on any server.
- TM Monitor for Surveillance:
One of the most interesting features of Troop Messenger is the surveillance feature. Through this, the admins of any organisation get to track or monitor the information exchanged by the internal teams. This way, admins can closely monitor what team members are talking about, which information is being exchanged between them, and when they’re working.
Apart from security benefits, the surveillance feature is also beneficial in terms of measuring team’s productivity and efficiency. Since admins can track information exchanged, they can monitor who’s working more efficiently or killing time in unnecessary chat.
- Live Location Tracking
Want to be more informed about your employees or team members’ location – use Troop Messsenger’s live location tracking feature. Using this your employees can share their location with your or the team as required. This feature comes handy in mission-critical situations for government or military teams.
How Else Does Troop Messenger Improves Communication?
Essentially, Troop Messenger is an office chat app that allows teams to interact remotely, share information, files, collaborate on documents, host meetings or conferences, and also stay in touch with third party vendors, supplies, freelancers, or even customers.
By enabling secure information exchange, Troop has helped organisations boost productivity, efficiency, and also sharpen internal team collaboration. At a glance, here’s how Troop Messenger can improve internal and external communications for your agency:
- Real-Time Private and Group Chat: As an instant messaging tool, Troop enables teams to have unlimited chat through unlimited groups and private messages.
- Audio and Video Calling: Troop Messengers enables teams to interact directly through voice messages or have face-to-face interactions over HD video calling.
- Secure File Sharing: Share or receive files remotely, without worrying about your data being monitored at rest or in transit. You can share all kinds of files irrespective of size, formats, and quality.
- Live Location Tracking: Through live location tracking, Troop Messengers can share their location with individuals or groups members of their choice.
- Remote Desktop Sharing: Want to make your meetings more interactive? Try Troop Messenger’s screen sharing feature. With the meeting host can display his desktop screen to the participants
- Integration with Dropbox, Google Drive, and LDAP: At Troop, document storage and remote collaboration is made easy with Dropbox and Google Drive integration. You can use Troop Messenger as a centralised space where all your chats and work files are stored.
Put simply, you and your team get to access, share, edit, and collaborate on both Dropbox and Google Drive files without switching between the apps.
- Orange Member access: If you want to have secure and easy collaboration with people outside your team – vendors, suppliers, freelancers, or customers- orange member feature does that for you.
Through Troop Messenger’s Orange Member feature team can have hassle free collaboration with other company’s employees or any third-party member of their choice. In short, you get to manage both internal and external team communication.
Bottom Line: What We’ve Learnt
All the hacking incidents that have occured in the past have one common lesson to learn – Losing business data, regulatory files, or official documents to malware infections or cyber criminals has great consequences.
Given how the businesses today operate in a highly competitive atmosphere, security breaches and hacking attempts have become a common phenomenon. These businesses thus require a secure file sharing or information exchange platform for protecting their confidential business-critical data.
A chat app that enables teams to ensure remote collaboration (with secure file sharing and encrypted instant messaging) is the solution. Now, we’re not saying these apps are 100% secure, but they’re definitely ten times more secure than the public messaging apps.
Through these chat apps, admins, employees, and other other stakeholders can interact and exchange data securely and efficiently (irrespective of the file size, format, complexity, and transfer volume). As a secure office messaging app, Troop Messenger allows businesses and government officials to share official matters without worrying about any intruder access to unauthorised security breach.