ArmorText named a Strong Performer and only Solution cited as Excelling at Out of Band Communications in 2022 Forrester Wave for Secure Communications
As you can imagine, we were over the moon with excitement at learning ArmorText had been designated a Strong Performer in The Forrester Wave™: Secure Communications, Q3, 2022 and the only platform among those assessed that “excels at enabling out-of-band communications”.
ArmorText received the highest possible scores in 9 criteria — including Data Sovereignty, Enhanced Functionality, and Market Approach — in its inaugural inclusion in an analyst report on secure communications. In fact, the only criteria we didn’t excel at — flexibility & customization — are precisely because we’re purpose built for Secure Out of Band Collaboration™ rather than more generically built for the whole enterprise.
What makes ArmorText so different?
- ArmorText works alongside your existing investments in enterprise wide Teams & Slack deployments as part of a Tier & Protect Strategy™.
- Most secure messaging platforms are either designed for consumers or set their sights on replacing all of an enterprise’s day-to-day communications.
- Critical roles and situations which warrant extra security, warrant a product built with the rest of their unique requirements in mind too.
- ArmorText is exactly that — Secure Out of Band Collaboration™ — built for your most sensitive executive, board, security, incident, threat and collective defense communications.
Tier & Protect
While every organization will define its own line in the proverbial sand, the principle is simple — your company’s current in-band communications platform continues to be used day-to-day for less sensitive matters while an out of band environment is used for more sensitive communications (e.g. those of executive, board, security, incident, and collective defense members.)
This approach builds upon a long utilized strategy employed by government, defense, and national intelligence and is summed up in the graphic below.
And, just in case you need help drawing that line, both we as well as amazing consultancies in our Partner Ecosystem (another criterion Forrester gave us the highest possible score in) are more than ready to help.
Selecting a Secure Out of Band Communications Solution
So, now that you’re ready to implement a Tier & Protect Strategy™ how do you cut through the secure messaging noise to find the right Secure Out of Band Collaboration™ platform for your enterprise?
There are a lot of secure messaging platforms available to your users. Some were designed for consumers, i.e. they lack user management, policy enforcement, centralized administration and governance. Others were designed for different uses cases within an enterprise, e.g. Symphony was designed specifically for traders.
Selecting the right solution as your go to for secure out of band collaboration can make all the difference during an actual crisis. Is your tool actually available to you? Is an adversary able to get into your out of band solution just as easily as your in-band solution, continuing to spy on business critical incident response comms? Can you take remediation actions or manage rogue users? Are you able to produce an audit trail of communications for legal review? Or, for court?
We excel at Secure Out of Band Collaboration™ because we’ve been in your shoes. We’ve thought through all of these questions and a whole lot more specifically from the perspective of security, incident response, and threat intelligence personnel like you.
To that end, we’ve defined a 3 Requirement rubric that can be used to gauge whether an out of band solution is right for you. Each requirement comes with a 3 point checklist to ensure the requirement is fully met. That’s 3 requirements with 9 total points to check off — it doesn’t get easier than that.
In fact, you can self-assess your own Secure Out of Band Collaboration / Incident Response preparedness with this handy tool below.
Getting Started
1 of 1
How would you rate you Incident Response (IR) communications plan?
(1 being worst & 5 being best)
First, let's look at how Out-of-Band your solution is.
1 of 3
Does your IR comms tool rely on any On-premise Components?
(e.g. single-sign-on?)
Is there network-connected hardware that supports your IR comms tool that would no longer be trustworthy if your network is breached?
First, let's look at how Out-of-Band your solution is.
2 of 3
Is your alternate tool Dependent on Your Network? Does your IR tool depend on Active Directory, Single Sign On or other authentication tools that would be taken offline if your network is breached?
First, let's look at how Out-of-Band your solution is.
3 of 3
Is your chosen IR comms tool a Duplicate of Current Tool? Is your chosen IR comms tool a Duplicate of Current Tool?
Out of Band Risk Level:
Your communications plan could be impacted by a network breach
Now, let's look at how Secure your solution is.
1 of 3
Are communications on your IR tool end-to-end encrypted (E2EE)? Don't forget: Encryption-at-rest and encryption-in-transit are not the same as end-to-end encryption.
Now, let's look at how Secure your solution is.
2 of 3
Can your admins see communications on your IR comms tool?
Will your comms be exposed to anyone with the proper admin credentials, intentionally or unintentionally
Now, let's look at how Secure your solution is.
3 of 3
Can your IR comms tool's provider see your communications?
(intentionally or unintentionally)
Can your IR comms tool's provider see your communications? (intentionally or unintentionally)
Secure Comms Risk Level:
Your communications plan could be impacted by a rogue insider
Finally, let's look at how well your solution supports compliance, regulatory, and legal requirements.
1 of 3
Does your IR comms tool give you a way to manage users?
Define policies?
Finally, let's look at how well your solution supports compliance, regulatory, and legal requirements.
2 of 3
Does your IR comms tool give you the ability to retain comms for compliance, regulatory, or legal requirements?
Finally, let's look at how well your solution supports compliance, regulatory, and legal requirements.
3 of 3
Does your IR comms tool require self-hosting to enable archive retention?
Your Overall Communications Plan Risk is:
Don't let your response plan fail before it even begins. Let's Get in Touch.
And, here’s a link to an executive briefing you can share with your colleagues on why a Secure Out of Band Collaboration solution is necessary as well as what to look for when assessing your options: Incident Response Essentials: Three Requirements for Secure Out of Band Collaboration™.
If you’d like to dig in further, you can read Forrester’s full report here.
Source: Forrester Research, Inc., “The Forrester Wave™: Secure Communications, Q3 2022,” by Heidi Shey, Amy DeMartine, Lok Sze Sung, and Peggy Dostie. Aug 29, 2022.