What are the risks of consumer messaging apps in government?

The use of consumer messaging apps within the workplace causes lack of transparent decision-making, security leaks and compliance breaches such as accurate record-keeping. Research shows consumer messaging apps are used within 73% of Australia's government agencies causing long-term negative impacts for the health of democracy, good governance, and the accountability of decision-makers.

How does Element compare to consumer messaging apps?

Element provides end-to-end encryption like Signal and WhatsApp, but additionally offers digital sovereignty through self-hosting, corporate control and access management, compliance features, open source software, protection against vendor lock-in, avoidance of single points of failure, secure inter-organisational communication, and no requirement for personal phone numbers.

Sovereign messenger for governments.

A consumer-style app that keeps governments in control of their communications.

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Everything people love

💚

199

Video calling

Voice messages

File attachments

Ensure rapid adoption, improve productivity and address shadow IT.

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+197

Everything organisations need.

A server-side solution to manage and control your communications.

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Easy management

Powerful admin console to configure and control the entire deployment from a single interface.

Corporate oversight

Choose hosting options, identity and access management, integrate with SSO, configure functionalities and curate chat room hierarchies.

Compliance requirements

Stay in control of conversations with admin rights, audit trails, archiving, anti-virus, content scanning and complete control of federation.

Consumer messaging apps within government presents unacceptable risks.

The use of consumer messaging apps within the workplace is now commonplace, causing lack of transparent decision-making, security leaks and compliance breaches such as accurate record-keeping.

News

Research shows consumer messaging apps are used within 73% of Australia’s government agencies causing “long-term negative impacts for the health of our democracy, good governance, and the accountability of our decision-makers.”

News

Scottish government bans the use of WhatsApp and any other "non-corporate" messaging services.

News

Signalgate shows the risk of running a government using consumer-grade messaging apps

Protect against Signalgate style accidental invites.

Securely managing invitations to group chats needs an enterprise-grade solution. Watch Element integrated with Microsoft Active Directory, to stop unapproved guests joining a chat room.

INSIGHTS

Do your employees use WhatsApp* at work?

(*or any other unauthorised consumer messaging app)?

The Future of Secure Communications, an Element study conducted by Forrester Consulting

52%
of IT leaders say say their employees are commonly using unsanctioned, real-time messaging apps with partners.

50%
of IT leaders say unauthorised communication tools are a significant challenge to leaders' ability to improve the security and reliability of real-time communications.

77%
of IT leaders say that their organisation struggles to maintain privacy and control of data shared via communications technologies.

Element compared to mainstream consumer messaging apps.

	Element	Signal	WhatsApp	Telegram
E2EE by default Only those in the conversation can decrypt messages and calls	Element: Yes	Signal: Yes	WhatsApp: Yes	Telegram: No
Available as a self-hosted system Ensure digital sovereignty through self-hosting	Element: Yes	Signal: No	WhatsApp: No	Telegram: No
Enterprise-grade functionalities Corporate control, access management and compliance	Element: Yes	Signal: No	WhatsApp: No	Telegram: No
Transparent code Built on open source software	Element: Yes	Signal: Yes	WhatsApp: No	Telegram: No
Open standard Guards against vendor lock-in	Element: Yes	Signal: No	WhatsApp: No	Telegram: No
Decentralised network resilience Avoids single points of failure	Element: Yes	Signal: No	WhatsApp: No	Telegram: No
Interoperable Communicate securely between organisations	Element: Yes	Signal: No	WhatsApp: No	Telegram: No
Protecting end-user privacy No personal phone numbers required	Element: Yes	Signal: No	WhatsApp: No	Telegram: No

Sovereign and self-hosted.

Element lets you choose where your communications data is stored; a fully managed hosted solution or host it yourself.

Built on the Matrix protocol, an open standard for secure, decentralised real time communications, to ensure maximum control and ownership of data and messages.

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The messenger challenge for defence organisations

How do defence organisations transform secure communications, and beat shadow IT, while retaining technological ownership and control? Our new whitepaper highlights the messenger challenge for defence organisations.

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Trusted by government and NGOs.

A messenger for NATO and its members

NATO is addressing the issues caused by consumer messaging apps by introducing NI2CE messenger - a sovereign and secure low-side messenger based on Element - that is proving interoperability and autonomy internally and for its members.

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Tchap connects the French Government

A secure government-wide messaging and collaboration platform called Tchap connects more than 300,000 civil servants across the French Government.

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A secure messenger for the German Bundeswehr

A secure, sovereign and open source messaging service is the new standard of real time communications for the German Armed Forces with more than 100,000 active users.

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Secure messaging for UNICC and its United Nations partners

UNICC is replacing email, unsanctioned messaging apps, and insecure video chat with Element for end-to-end encrypted messaging, VoIP and video conferencing sor secure communications within its organisation and between its United Nations partners.

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