SMS Messaging in Government
You will likely have received an incident alert, appointment reminder or general announcement from your local government agencies. There are a variety of ways government is incorporating SMS messaging to instantly communicate with the general public.
And SMS has proven itself as an effective communication tool.
Whilst is widely used, it presents varied cost and feature limitations that can hold back government organisations’ mobile needs.
Security and privacy concerns are also top barriers for incorporating SMS (text messaging) within such a heavily regulated industry.
The growth of mobile devices and apps presents new opportunities in the public sector like local, state and federal government organisations.
Therefore, large enterprises and government are seeking a secure and feature-rich messaging experience without sacrificing the reach and immediacy of traditional SMS.
It’s Not Worth Taking Risks
With easily available consumer chat apps like Whatsapp and Facebook Messenger, government workers may think they are sharing data confidentially when using them to communicate in the workplace.
In fact, in recent months senior ministers of the Australian government were discovered to have been using WhatsApp for internal communications.
The problem? Whilst WhatsApp provides a basic level of encryption to its users, they are not approved by cyber intelligence agencies. These kind of consumer-based mobile messaging apps are vulnerable to data and security breaches and can disrupt data loss and reputation damage adding up to significant costs for organisations.
Addressing Privacy and Security with Mobile Apps
With the rise in cyber-crime, government sector is already ahead of the curve when it comes to security – seeking methods to protect data sent to and from mobile devices.
Overcoming security concerns, mobile government solutions are emerging among state and local government agencies, concentrating on features for internal organisational process and productivity improvement.
Secure enterprise mobile messaging apps promise a feature-packed, multimedia and secure experience without sacrificing the reach offered by SMS.
Take our mobile messaging solution, Soprano GAMMA, for example, it is a secure, enterprise-grade mobile messaging product that intelligently integrates IP messaging with SMS.
It maintains the SMS alerting experience for public while providing team collaboration features for government workforce – all on one secure mobile platform.
It features end-to-end encryption, which means when two or more devices communicate via GAMMA, the information is transmitted using a secret code rather than insecure plain text.
As a result, only the people communicating can read the messages and no other person. It is also armed with security features to:
- Protect data using a three layer channel, key and message encryption
- Secure access using PIN-protected mobile app
- Set messages to expire after a specified time period
- Remote wipe messages on any mobile device from a secure messaging platform
The app was also awarded the Common Criteria certification in July 2016. Common Criteria certification is only awarded to technology products that meet stringent security standards.
GAMMA is an ideal mobile government solution. It facilitates quick communications between departments using voice, text and multimedia messages from anywhere in the world whilst remaining secure and compliant.
Learn how our solutions can start benefitting your government institution.
