What Does ‘Purpose-Built for Out-of-Band Communications’ Mean?

Forrester just released its Q3 2024 Forrester Wave™: Secure Communications Solutions and noted that “ArmorText’s platform is purpose-built for out-of-band collaboration to meet the unique needs of security operations (SecOps) teams,” and that it “outclasses for SecOps, incident response, and threat-intel-sharing use cases.”

According to Forrester secure communications solutions “enable the flow of necessary and mission-critical communications and collaboration for varied use cases. These range from workforce collaboration and external partner collaboration to out-of-band communications for incident response to military and defense mission operations.”

Interestingly, ArmorText was the only solution in the report that Forrester noted offers “out-of-band communications.” We have seen a shift in how “out-of-band communication” is defined since the Q2 2022 Forrester Wave™: Secure Communications Solutions. The industry went through a period where many vendors self-identified “out-of-band communications for IR, SecOps” as one of their top three extended use cases but now ArmorText is the only vendor in the current Wave that was purpose-built for out-of-band communications.

What does this mean?

ArmorText was built exclusively as a secure out-of-band collaboration solution, not a general secure messaging solution. ArmorText was not built to replace day-to-day communications apps, which has enabled us to focus on the three criteria that must be met for a secure out-of-band communication solution:

• Requirement #1: It must be standalone
• Requirement #2: It must be more secure
• Requirement #3: It can’t sacrifice controls

While traditional communication platforms can be easily compromised or rendered unreliable, ArmorText’s user+device specific end-to-end encryption (E2EE) provides a secure out-of-band communication channel that remains operational irrespective of the status of standard corporate systems. Unconnected from Identity Providers (IDP) and able to provide end-to-end encrypted retained archives for after-action review and legal compliance, ArmorText is resilient against attempts to weaponize your infrastructure against you.

For example, because organizations dealing with cyberattacks don’t always know who needs to be in the mix in advance, ArmorText provides multiple methods for out-of-band user enrollment and onboarding. The platform allows organizations to quickly bring essential personnel and external partners into the fold without relying on potentially compromised email systems or other standard registration workflows, which may be unusable during an incident. ArmorText ensures that critical communications are not only possible but also secure during crises.

With the above differentiators in mind, Forrester has concluded that “organizations that require out-of-band communications for incident response, security operations, or threat-intel sharing should consider ArmorText.”