The sudden switch to remote work has forever changed the way teams communicate. A ton of research has been done so far to document this transformation and its impact on the work environment, so there’s no need to reinvent the wheel – but this we know for sure: digital communication solutions are here to stay. The problem is, most of the popular ones are either:
- not designed for work-related communication;
- not privacy-oriented, at all.
Dedicated Chat: a game-changer in teamwork
There are so many chat applications designed for everyday, casual conversations. People tend to stick to them out of convenience, and unfortunately use them to discuss important, even confidential company issues with their co-workers. Talking to many teams so far, we can see how it messes with their work-life balance, as there is no proper distinction between purely social and work-related interactions – simply because these apps were never designed for work-related purposes.
In PrivMX, we believe teamwork starts with a conversation – no matter how and where it happens. We also believe that teams should have a choice to keep their conversations truly private; and that’s when things get complicated. With so many enterprise chat solutions out there, with their amazing UX and UI, awesome features meant to boost your productivity and improve team spirit, not many are offering an honest, transparent privacy policy.
To be fair – most of them present such document on their website and everything looks legit at first glance, but as soon as you start looking into how your team’s data is stored, where it’s actually located and who has access to it, there are no solid answers. There are open-source solutions, like the ones we mentioned here, that allow you to self-host and therefore take full control of your communication, but most of the cloud-based solutions are not privacy-oriented, so you never know who can read your messages.
End-to-end Encryption in Chat: protecting ideas exactly where they are born.
Why would I need to keep my work conversations private? We have nothing to hide! – you might say. Our answer would be: What do you cherish most at your company? What’s the most valuable asset in your team? If it’s your ideas, you certainly agree that the best ones often come up in the middle of a conversation, frequently by accident. Such insights are worth taking care of from the very beginning. Same applies to all the communication regarding your internal business strategies, decisions you’re making, budgets, HR information, your clients/or partner’s data – all the stuff you’re discussing every day. That is why even the most casual conversations at work should be protected and the best way to do it is by using encryption.
There are several types of encryption, but the most reasonable and privacy-friendly solution is the one we’re using at PrivMX Fusion: end-to-end encryption based on zero-knowledge servers. In this case, all your data is secured on your device (client-side encryption) with a unique encryption key. So when a chat message or a video call transmission, or an audio message leaves your computer to get to the cloud and later – to your recipient – it’s already encrypted, locked with a private key and accessible only to the people you want to have conversations with. No one but them. Not an admin of the server infrastructure where your data is located, not even us, running PrivMX Fusion. Your business data is nobody’s business.
If you are interested in how PrivMX Fusion stands out, read our article about the types of encryption.
We’ve built PrivMX Fusion around the idea of transparent communication, so chat is an essential elements of our Fusion of Tools. That doesn’t mean it’s only for work-related stuff – you’re free to set up a Section solely for off-topic conversations. To be honest, our team has 6 of them 😉 But as we’re sharing memes, recipes or discuss Space exploration, we can rest assured that all of this water cooler talks remain private, for our eyes only – just like all of our ideas for PrivMX ecosystem.
Choosing the right tools is crucial for a successful business, and it’s way easier to make the right decision at the very beginning, than suddenly make a switch when you already have tons of files, tasks or messages. PrivMX Fusion is a great opportunity to transfer all your valuable information to a secured workspace and stop worrying about third-parties accessing your company’s data.
