Sharing group messages has become a popular and normal way of doing business. But how secure is your sensitive corporate information when it is being shared in this way? Is it vulnerable to attack from cyber criminals intent on exploiting your information?

End-to-End Encrypted (E2EE) messaging applications today have made it easy to connect with coworkers, vendors, and other business partners around the world, but how secure is the application you’re using? Do you trust that your group messages are just as secure as your one-to-one messages? We’ll I’ve got news for you, they’re probably not!

E2EE protocols used in popular apps today lose their security integrity once you have more than two devices in a conversation, and yes, that even means your direct messages when you use more than one device.

So why are your group messages less secure when using these apps? Simply put, the number of resources in a group conversation it would take to encrypt your messages in the same manner as one-to-one would not scale well as the group grows. To get around this, other messaging platforms start using “sender keys”, which are sent with the message for the other participant’s devices to decrypt. Now imagine a malicious threat intercepting this message which holds the key to decrypt it… This would expose your group conversations to man-in-the-middle attacks and once compromised, the intruder can listen in on your conversations going forward.

Asynchronous Ratcheting Trees (ART) was built so that you can have the same level of security in your group conversations, while also scaling well in very large groups that have multiple participants using multiple devices. Think of it as a tree with its branches each holding unique encryption keys to give your group conversations optimum security. This gives you the highest level of privacy and protection in the market today.

Messaging Layer Security (MLS) is an additional layer of security in which each message is encrypted individually. Think of messaging as a “pipe” and MLS as unlimited pipes within that pipe that are all protected. Other platforms that boast E2EE do not do this. Other messaging platforms can be described as one large pipe that “message soup” flows through. Once someone gets in, they have access to everything.

Mercury, powered by Secured Communications is the FIRST to market with this level of security; protecting every message, every time. No matter how many messages, devices or people are involved.

Use Mercury for all your communications needs: secured messaging, file sharing (unlimited file size), VOIP calls and 2K HD video meetings. In confidence, with confidence. Every time.

Kyle Bebee is the Chief Product Officer for Secured Communications and plays a critical role in the development and evolution of the company’s products, ensuring that the company continues to innovate and maintain its position as an industry leader in security and productivity.