Why Secure Communication for Governments & Regulated Industries?

What Drives Regulated Industries & Governments to Prefer Secure Communication Platforms?

There are many reasons for government agencies wanting to use secure communication platforms. As some of the most favoured targets for cyberattack are government agencies and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) according to Microsoft, with almost 80% of nation-state attacks directed at them, its crucial protection is in place with internal communication.

When handling sensitive data and information daily, and it is of utmost importance it remains confidential and secure, using advanced methods to ensure privacy and security is critical. In public sector and government agency environments, the risks of those wanting to maliciously intercept and use this data is a real threat that can occur at any moment. This includes data held on public records such as personal details, email addresses, phone numbers, national insurance numbers and more concerning the public. The need for secure communication to be able to work in private and minimise this threat is high.  

Using secure communication platforms helps organizations and governments to protect their assets, maintain the trust of their stakeholders, and meet their legal and regulatory obligations. In the modern digital world, there can be no compromise whether it’s a business wanting to maintain trade secrets and client confidentiality, to defence, military and government agencies that deal with highly sensitive information of national interest. No matter the type of data you work with, your privacy and data sovereignty is a priority.  

Benefits of Secure Communication for Governments & Businesses

Confidentiality and data protection – Secure communication platforms will provide an added layer of security, ensuring that sensitive or confidential information remains private and cannot be accessed by unauthorized parties. This is vital and options including E2EE (End-to-End Encryption) will protect any communication whether messaging, video or voice data, screen sharing or data transfer. As confidentiality is high on the agenda for any business or government, the risk of information falling into the wrong hands can be neutralised with secure communication protocols.

Integrity – helps protect against tampering or modification of messages, ensuring that the information transmitted is accurate and unchanged. This is crucial to ensure communication stays as intended, for example, transferring sensitive information that must be accurate and unaltered during transit such as trade secrets or data that is highly confidential. Verifying the authenticity of the sender and ensuring data is encrypted in transit and at rest is a crucial barrier to maintaining integrity.

Non-repudiation – Secure communication platforms allow for the authentication of the sender and recipient, which can help prevent the denial of actions or statements made during the communication. This can be achieved through advanced cryptography methods and will ensure the authenticity of the sender is checked and verified and that their identity is clear. This ensures recipients know exactly who the sender is and can trust the information and data communicated within the platform.

Compliance – Many organizations and governments are subject to regulations that require them to use secure communication platforms to protect sensitive information. It’s of paramount importance to remain compliant, and secure communication platforms ensure this is being followed, enabling users to work without concern of being in breach of this. For example, sending data to an unintended party, using non-secure methods of sending data (such as through email servers). A secure platform prevents these kinds of human errors and provides protection.  

Risk management – Using secure communication platforms can help reduce the risk of data breaches, cyber attacks, and other security incidents that could compromise sensitive information and damage an organization's reputation. This is of huge benefit to any form of organisation or government agency as the risks are high, so being able to minimise any potential incident before it happens is a good strategy to follow.

What are the Risks of not using Secured Communication?

• Unauthorised changes – being left vulnerable to attackers accessing and changing internal systems and data who are not blocked from accessing.

• Increase in security breaches – vulnerabilities in your security continuing to be taken advantage of without the correct software or updates being utilised.
• Exploitation – attackers getting access and installing malware or ransomware, or even creating backdoor access so they can work undetected in future.
• Leakage of confidential data and information – compromise of sensitive data accessed and shared that will undermine integrity and reputation, as well as in breach of compliance.
• Denial of service attacks – attackers could access and prevent legitimate authorized users from accessing networks, data, and systems.
• Disruption to business operations – with each attack, this can cause huge disruption and can lead to long-term problems with reputation, revenue, and confidence from users.  

Without the proper management and software in place, any organization will struggle to run without secure communications in place. Whilst many issues can be related to human error, using a secure platform will minimise this risk and ensure the highest levels of protection.

Not only does it need to be as secure as possible, but it also needs to provide users with tools and features that will improve productivity and are easy to implement and use. Having the most secure platform and system available may protect you, but if it doesn’t integrate well into your existing systems and processes, it may cause internal friction.  

How RealTyme Can Help with Secure Communication

As a trusted provider of secure communications, the RealTyme platform provides everything government agencies and organisations require to work safely and securely. Easy to integrate and work with, we can show you how to make security and data privacy your number one priority whilst helping your teams collaborate effortlessly with best-in-class features. Here are some of the ways our secure communications platform can deliver:

• Full data sovereignty – grant complete control over the system for higher privacy, data residency and operational ownership for your organisation to work privately without any compromise, ensuring data is stored according to compliance requirements.

• Complete control – Through the administration console you will centrally manage users’ access, data retention, backup rights, file export rights and security policies on all devices and maintain full operational control.
• Military-grade encryption– E2EE at transit and at rest by default, providing custom key management options, private circles, and minimal risk of interception.
• Privacy by design – built from the ground up with your privacy at its core, ensuring advanced privacy settings to protect all information on users and confidential communication.
• Best-in-class security – only authorized users can access the platform using advanced user authentication, and all information transferred can only be decrypted by the intended recipient.
• Minimal data footprint – no private metadata collection, no duplicated data on our servers, and no analysis or sharing of your information.

• Transparent subscription-based model – no data monetization. we do not compromise your information for ad revenue, providing complete transparency with our paid-for subscription.
• On-premise and on-cloud deployments– choose to deploy the way you want
• State-of-the-art cryptography – mutual authentication through digital signatures using public key cryptography (ECDSA with SHA256/512 over the curves P-256 and P-521)

To see how the RealTyme platform provides the all-in-one solution for governments and organisations, please request an invite today. If you have any questions for us about secure collaboration and the challenges you face, please speak to sales and we'll be happy to help further.