Instant messaging is changing how business gets done. If your organization uses an instant messaging program like Slack or Microsoft Teams or even consumer messaging platforms like WhatsApp, Telegram, Signal, etc., you can attest to the communication and productivity benefits. (Or maybe you can’t — more on that in a moment.)
Studies show that approximately 23 billion instant messages (IMs) get sent each day globally. That’s nearly 300,000 per second. Some of these qualify as personal, but many (perhaps most) occur during the regular course of business.
What many might not realize is that their business IM software could be putting their organization at risk. Traditional IM clients aren’t designed for truly compliant communication, a key vulnerability for businesses in highly regulated industries like healthcare, insurance and finance. They’re difficult, maybe impossible, to moderate. They have serious and perhaps insurmountable weaknesses around data auditing and retention. And even if we set all these issues aside, traditional business IM clients are only as secure as the devices they’re used on.
So, the natural solution is to return to “email-first” communication, right?
Probably not. But you may need a more secure business instant messaging solution, like SayHey Messenger®. Before we dive into how SayHey can help your organization address its data security challenges, let’s take a closer look at where traditional business IM solutions fall short.
The Issue with the Status Quo
Traditional business instant messaging solutions seem convenient and capable — and they are for the most part. But when it comes to data security, hidden vulnerabilities lurk just beneath the surface. Here are some of those common issues that can contribute to serious data security risk.
- User Management Issues: How much control do you have over your IM app’s users? If you’re using Slack or Microsoft Teams, you can add, remove, and change user permissions, but you have limited control over the types of content your users can share and virtually no content moderation ability. To begin with, this is a potential regulatory nightmare, as untethered users are liable to say and share things that land them (and your organization) in legal hot water. It’s also a serious threat to your DEI program and could lower employee morale or increase attrition. If your company is using the previously listed “consumer style” messaging apps, you of course have absolutely no user management or safeguards.
- Data Management Issues: Other IM apps have some data management controls, but determined end-users can circumvent them fairly easily. And if your team is using a consumer messaging app like WhatsApp, iMessage, or Signal, you have zero control over message content and metadata.
Additional Status Quo Issues:
- Data Security Issues: Traditional business messaging tools are “secure” only in the sense that they’re password-protected and allow private groups or channels. They don’t encrypt message data. And, they store said data in ways and places that may or may not comply with applicable laws (e.g., GDPR). Meanwhile, consumer messaging apps that do use encryption can’t police end-user behavior or keep user devices from falling into the wrong hands. End-to-end encryption is only as good as the humans who use it.
- Industry-Specific Compliance Issues: General-purpose business messaging apps aren’t built for industry-specific compliance regimes, such as HIPAA (healthcare) and PCI (finance). At least, not the off-the-shelf versions. Encrypted apps do a better job of protecting message data, but they’re inherently difficult to audit. This causes a different set of compliance challenges.
It’s Not 2013 Anymore
Can you get around these problems simply by choosing not to make a choice? In other words, can you pretend it’s 2013 again while trying to skate by with your email client, Zoom, in-person conversations, and old-fashioned voice phone calls?
Unfortunately, no. Remote work is far more prevalent than a decade ago, or even just a few years ago. Even in the in-person environments, workspaces are more fragmented than they used to be.
Email, even new-and-improved, all-in-one clients, isn’t powerful enough to support your far-flung team’s needs. Neither is Zoom or your preferred video conferencing solution. Both have the same compliance and risk management issues, anyway.
The Biggest Data Security Risk for Your Business is Sitting in Your Pocket
Your employees will work around the absence of an organization-wide IM solution, one way or another. They’ll adopt a “bring your own” approach to messaging, using personal iMessage, WhatsApp, or carrier SMS clients to achieve the same results. Needless to say, this is not a cybersecurity best practice, and in fact, it’s even worse than using a traditional business IM solution.
7T, the company behind SayHey Messenger know all this, and they’ve put a great deal of effort into building a messaging tool that addresses these issues. When used properly and deployed across your entire organization, SayHey Messenger’s mobile and Web messaging clients can mitigate the data security risks you face every day.
How SayHey Messenger® Mitigates Data Security Risk
SayHey Messenger’s core features and capabilities support stringent data security protocols and regulatory compliance regimes across diverse industries and legal jurisdictions:
- Total Data Sovereignty: As a SayHey Messenger admin, you have total ownership and control over your organization’s data. Users can’t delete original messages, as with consumer messaging apps.
- Comprehensive Audit Trail: SayHey encrypts and stores all messaging data in a secure, scalable AWS environment, where it’s available for auditing whenever. Super-granular auditing tools simplify the actual process. This allows you to sort and export real-time data. This also allows you to organize reports around topics, keywords, users, or specific message threads.
- Complete Moderation Toolset: SayHey offers a keyword-based, automated moderation toolset. It’s an easy, low-maintenance way to flag and remove problematic messages and remain compliant with both external legal requirements (e.g., labor laws) and internal protocols (e.g., DEI frameworks). Users can also flag messages that may violate company policies, making your moderation job that much easier.
- Scalable, Cross-Organization Communication With SayHey Spaces: SayHey Spaces enables company-wide communications and collaboration within smaller groups. It’s the sort of tool that can help fix persistent communication challenges within your organization, which isn’t necessarily a data security issue. But, it’s also useful for communicating key compliance messages or supporting general data hygiene initiatives as well.
- Engagement and User Adoption: This is where Slack and to some extent Teams, have let their user base down. Their platforms are very complex and have consistently low user adoption rates to such a degree that quite often, employees skirt their use for familiar consumer platforms. In turn, this leaves the user back at square one. SayHey Messenger was designed with an intuitive, consumer style frontend for incredible adoption rates.
Who Is SayHey Messenger For?
SayHey Messenger is useful for virtually any organization with real-time communication needs and data security challenges that — in their experience — neither consumer nor enterprise instant messaging solutions can adequately address. This includes firms that:
- Need to more effectively manage a hybrid or remote workforce that’s currently working with a hodgepodge of “bring your own” communications tools and enterprise-grade IM solution(s) without adequate data protections
- Operate in highly regulated industries with strict regulatory compliance obligations and intense internal data auditing needs
- Want to maintain full control of their data, including message content and history
- Have intensive message moderation needs, whether due to regulatory compliance requirements or internal policies (e.g., DEI frameworks)
- Have high internal collaboration needs built around messaging software
- Have struggled to drive user adoption of other messaging clients or data security tools
SayHey Messenger can be deployed in one of two ways that best fit your organization:
- SayHey Messenger Business is an independent mobile app and web app. This way, you and your colleagues can communicate from anywhere. Complete with what makes your company unique. This includes branding, logos, colors, and any other designs that will make it your own. Within days, it rapidly deploys through a secure cloud environment which allows for a quick launch.
- SayHey Messenger Enterprise is a messaging platform specifically for businesses that integrates into the software system you likely already use, be it as CRM, ERP, or any other platform–including mobile– that your company uses. You can deploy it from your own secure private cloud environment. By doing so, you’ll have the customizations to suit your company’s unique workflows and processes. These include SSO and Active Directory integrations.
This exciting, emerging IM tool can’t work miracles. Like all business software, it’s only as effective as its users (and admins) allow it to be.
Yet, SayHey Messenger’s data security capabilities represent a clear improvement on the status quo. If that status quo isn’t working for your organization right now, perhaps it’s time for a change.
Featured Image Credit: Christina Morillo; Pexels; Thanks!
