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Slack enables customers to control their encryption keys in enterprise version

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Re: Slack enables customers to control their encryption keys in enterprise version

#131

Post by pmart123 »

femiagbabiaka wrote: post #93
geofft wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it not worth Linux running on mainframes because mainframes are expensive? Is it not worth Kerberos being free software because the only real users of Kerberos are enterprises? Computing freedom for anyone is computing freedom, and contributes to a norm of user control instead of service provider control. This step is a very small step, and it only affects a few users. But it's still a step in the right direction.…

Both of the technologies you named as examples are free and open. Anyone can inspect them and deploy them on their own. Slack isn’t like that unfortunately. This is a move to add another feature that will attract enterprise customers, I would doubt that even Slack themselves would proclaim this as a move towards greater software freedom.

I agree that this move is articulating enterprise customer demands rather than demonstrating greater software freedom. I don’t view this as unfortunate though. Slack is a productivity and collaboration product versus a utility like a low level database or encryption method. As such, many users and businesses want to pay for support, added features, hosting/availability/backups. It is better to have someone having to pay Slack a lot for power features than have a bunch of targeted ads in Slack. The buck stops somewhere.

Re: Slack enables customers to control their encryption keys in enterprise version

#132

Post by hombre_fatal »

femiagbabiaka wrote: post #124
quacker wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IRC doesn't even have the only feature I care about: the native ability to see messages sent while I was logged out. And no, I don't want to run my own bouncer, and I don't want people running their own insecure bouncers across my company. Yes, I could use something like IRCCloud but that requires another account and I'm tied to their client unless I pay[1] https://www.irccloud.com/faq#faq-bnc

If you want those features but are unwilling to run a bouncer or use irccloud, you’re correct, Slack is the best offering for you. But I’m wondering: why Slack and not IRCCloud if that’s the feature that matters to you?

IRC is worse for me because the people I talk to don't run a bouncer or use irccloud even though I do. Fixing it just for me does not fix the reasons why IRC sucks in this regard.

Re: Slack enables customers to control their encryption keys in enterprise version

#134

Post by ska »

seqastian wrote: post #130
ddoolin wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe you can still provide chat transcripts from Slack without managing keys yourself.

and you can still intercept all the SSL if you just roll out your own certs to all the workstations and the firewall opens everything..

Isn’t this standard practice in some industries ?

Re: Slack enables customers to control their encryption keys in enterprise version

#135

Post by femiagbabiaka »

hombre_fatal wrote: post #118
LinuxBender wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are a few web clients that use redis to allow you to see history. I will be the first to admit, those clients don't scale as well as IRC itself does. [1] [2] And of course, someone would have to manage that infrastructure. It isn't for everyone. Another option would be to rent a really cheap VM and run a tmux or screen session with weechat [3] or epic [4], but command line isn't for everyone either. [1] - https…

Sure, but that fixes it for you, not anyone else. What's the point when the person you're talking to went offline because they went through a tunnel or momentarily closed their laptop when you sent the message? This classic HN idea that people only use Slack over IRC because it looks better/easier is a reminder of nerd hubris that prevents one from understanding people and products.

People do use Slack because it looks better and is easier to use.... the features you're talking about are possible with IRC, it just requires work that the average consumer isn't willing to do. The other half of the equation is that IRC is better in ways that consumers don't care about, yourself included.

Re: Slack enables customers to control their encryption keys in enterprise version

#136

Post by cwingrav »

tmaly wrote: post #103

The title of this post makes it sound like a bad thing, but in regulated industries like Finance, firms are required to produce chat transcripts of the traders to regulators. Slack would be unusable in this industry if the firms could not capture all of the chat logs.

I think this is about making sure only you can create chat transcripts, not Slack. This would greatly increase enterprise adoption if they knew a company easn’t Reading it’s mail. Am I reading this wrong?

Re: Slack enables customers to control their encryption keys in enterprise version

#140

Post by jiveturkey »

fearbeer wrote: post #46
amaccuish wrote: post #19

Isn't this just shifting partly your trust from Slack to Amazon?

I think it's very smart of Slack. AWS Encryption SDK[1] is a well designed, battle tested data encryption library. Amazon KMS is a well audited service used by AWS to manage all sorts of keys and even supports external HSM integration. For slack to build all this from the ground up would be time consuming. Hard part being 3rd party validation, penetration testing and certification. [1]: https://docs.aws.amazon.com/en…

> Hard part being 3rd party validation, penetration testing and certification.

Hard part?? That's just the laborious part. The hard part is in building an actually secure service.

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