Is Your Phone As Secure As You Think It Is?
Listen to this articleEvery day, millions of people around the world use smartphones in every aspect of their business. From banking and contacting clients to phone and videoconferencing with colleagues, smartphones are an indispensible communication tool, one that few of us can imagine doing our work without.
We use these devices so freely because we assume that they are secure — no one who believed their phone would be vulnerable to hacking at any moment would feel comfortable using it to send or store sensitive work information. But a mounting body of evidence shows that we may be wrong to trust these everyday technologies so implicitly.
Every year, millions of North Americans become victims of data hacks and spyware viruses that accessed personal information through their phones. In many cases, these individuals weren’t even aware that they had been hacked at all, so subtle and sophisticated were the cyber attacks.
For private citizens who don’t use their smartphones for work, hacking and spyware are annoyances that become personally threatening only when their data is used for fraudulent purposes such as identity theft. But for those who use their phones for work, the implications can be much more serious.
The huge amounts of corporate information shared every second over wireless and SMS connections represent a gold mine for a wide range of third party actors, from governments to data pirates to agents of corporate espionage. When it comes to keeping this kind of information safe, the only thing that is guaranteed to work is encryption.
Encryption has become a bit of a buzzword over the past decade, as awareness grows around the dangers of unprotected digital communication. Prominent political and business scandals, like the one that damaged Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, have made cyber security issues a topic of dinner table conversation, and many communication tools tout their ability to offer encryption services to protect their customer’s information.
Unfortunately, not all encryption offers equal protection. The only way to truly guarantee secure end-to-end communication is by using an encrypted smartphone from a provider that reduces your phone’s functionality and installs custom encryption protocols to ensure that hackers have no way into your device.
Companies like ChatMail Secure have pioneered an approach to encryption that allows users to access the tools they need to get their work done — chat, image, and voice messaging — but which also use the latest encryption protocols to ensure your communications are absolutely secure.
In addition to offering group chat, ChatMail’s CAMP protocol makes it possible for users to engage in anonymous group chats, where only the conversation’s administrator knows the identities of the people talking. This is especially useful for those working in industries like journalism, where it may be necessary to have people communicate with each other without revealing their identities.
The only way to ensure that no third parties have access to your emails is by sending and receiving them via encrypted smartphone, so if you want to ensure that your business communications remain confidential, you need to consider whether your current device is providing you with adequate protection.
If you aren’t currently protected by encryption, consider getting in touch with an encryption specialist today.
