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Secure Communication for Businesses

Every now and then there is talk. If you run a business, you know what we are talking about. Every day we communicate. There are phone calls, text messages, e-mails, web portals, bulk data transfers, faxes, and more transmissions we have to deal with during a normal day at work. A part of this communication transports important information such as logins/passwords, offers, invoices, reports or personal data (any piece of information linked to a person). Most of the time our communication channels are up and running. This has not to be the case. The recent events in UK, the San Francisco underground, the regime in Syria (and Libya and Egypt), or the discussion about the Internet kill switch show that communication lines are always a prime target for attackers. The motivation of the attacker doesn't play a role if your business is in risk of being cut-off from networks.

You might want to spend some time preparing for blackouts or eavesdroppers before you encounter any one of these threats. Travellers are well aware that you can be disconnected faster than you anticipate. Virtual private network (VPN) links do not work in all countries. Mobile phone networks must not be trusted for sensitive information in general. GSM has been successfully attacked already (and will probably follow the path of early Wi-Fi networks in terms of security). GPRS has been attacked as well. The results were presented at the Chaos Communication Camp. This is no news to Internet veterans or members of NGOs threatened in countries abroad and domestically.
The lesson is always the same: You have to add extra layers of security. You have to consider using your own keys and what to do with these keys. Secure communication between and inside groups boils down to proper key management. This means you can start working on your security by making sure you can organise the switch to secure protocols. Simply stating "Let's encrypt!" won't get you far.

You can try secure communication in small steps to get used to the complexity involved. We use GPG, a cryptographically secured drop box and TextSecure for Android among other things. Drop us some ciphertext.