Criteria to Determine How Secure Your Message Application Is

Messaging applications have constructed out a foothold in businesses, clearly proving their operational advantages. Nonetheless, it isn’t responsible to leverage a solution without ensuring that the solution is secure. There are a couple criteria that you should consider to find out how secure your chosen application really is.

The Criteria
When assessing your messaging solution, ask yourself:

• Are my messages encrypted, and how encrypted are they?
• How transparent is the application to scrutiny?
• How are messages deleted?
• How much metadata is kept?

Let's review why these questions are the critical ones to ask.

Are my messages encrypted, and how encrypted are they?
Encryption is a method of scrambling data so that it is incredibly hard to interpret, accomplished via an algorithm known as an encryption key. This makes any data that has been encrypted extremely secure.

Many major messaging applications utilize encryption today, but not all of them follow the most secure practices.

For example, applications like Google Hangouts and Skype encrypt the messages that their users send… but also keep a copy of the encryption keys. This is so they can access the messages sent and collect data to power advertising. This also means that your data is left vulnerable if a cybercriminal hacks their way into the application’s servers, or if the government gives them a search warrant.

More common, luckily, are apps that use end-to-end encryption, where the application only holds the keys that encrypt the data, accessible by the users. The users, however, hold the keys that decrypt the data again. As a result, not even the company hosting the messaging application can view the contents of their users’ messages, nevermind cybercriminals or law enforcement. WhatsApp and Signal are two apps that now leverage this approach. In fairness, Skype does provide this capability as well in its Private Conversation feature, but it isn’t enabled by default.

How transparent is the application to scrutiny?
Taking the developer at their word is one thing; it’s quite another for independent and impartial experts to be able to confirm the claims that are made about an application’s security. This is why applications based on open-source code are usually more trustworthy, as they are scrutinized by experts who discover and report any vulnerabilities.

A few applications offer their source code openly, including Signal, Telegram, and Wickr, while WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger don’t qualify but are based on the open-source Signal protocol.

If an application is closed-source, like iMessage is, a user is entrusting the developer completely to maintain the security of the messages sent.

How are messages deleted?
While sending a message securely is imperative, the security of the message once it reaches its destination should not be overlooked. If someone without authorization gains access to the device later, encryption isn’t going to do anything to protect your data. Nevertheless, if you are able to delete the message after it is delivered, security is suddenly much more likely.

Skype, Telegram, and Signal all permit a user to do so. In fairness, so does WhatsApp, but it needs to be deleted within 13 hours.

Some apps offer self-deleting messages, described under various names, that terminate themselves after so much time has elapsed. Signal has “disappearing messages” with a customizable time. As we have established previously, not all apps offer the same functions, and this does nothing to delete any screenshots of your message that the recipient may have taken.

How much metadata is kept?
In addition to the contents of your messages, you want to know that your chosen application is also protecting your security via the metadata it stores. Metadata can contribute to security issues via user profiling, as it includes things like the identities of both sender and recipient of a given message, when communications were made and for what duration, IP addresses, and even the kinds of devices used. It can say a lot about you.

This is precisely why you want to make sure you know what data your messaging application will collect, as well as what it will preserve. This site offers a handy breakdown of many popular applications, broken down side-by-side.

This information will hopefully allow you to make the best choice for your organization. For more assistance with your business’ security and operations, Macro Systems has the IT solutions that you need. Call 703-359-9211 for more information.