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WhatsApp banned on House staffers' devices

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Re: WhatsApp banned on House staffers' devices

#82

Post by tsumnia »

alephnerd wrote: post #68
GuB-42 wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't mean that MS Teams is safer, it means that the government has tighter control on MS Teams. Or maybe that Microsoft pays more than Meta.

MS products allow you to store data locally without any egress, so an IT team has access to it. This is the sticking point, because WhatsApp has now integrated Meta AI into the app, but (obviously) do not provide an on-prem data store. This is why Deepseek AI (the Deepseek app) and ChatGPT (the OpenAI app) are barred as well. Data Stewardship and Zero Trust has been an internal initiative in the House for a couple ye…

> The fact that almost no one on this [thread] knows these

Its not that they aren't known, but rather we just came off a long trend of thin-clients and cloud storage. Some companies merely stay in that ethereal space, while others had concerns about their data. Criticizing people for doing what experts were pushing for the past 20 years doesn't need to devolve into calling their expertise into question.

The downvotes are for that, not because "you're wrong".

Re: WhatsApp banned on House staffers' devices

#84

Post by swarnie »

benced wrote: post #79
swarnie wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I ban Whatsapp but require Teams on company devices. Can you explain why the thinking is wrong?

This is very reasonable if you have compliance needs or similar. That’s not what this office is saying - it’s saying teams is more secure. This is wrong. The nature of banning private messaging apps is trading security for legibility. If this office is interested in that (which it’s not - it allows Signal), they should say so.

I do have a compliance need, similar to this office i imagine.

Teams is more secure in my opinion.

I as an admin can control who you can/can't talk to, what you can share with them, when you can share it. Correctly configured MS Teams is a pretty secure setup.

On the flipside im not sure i can make someone else's Whatsapp not auto download anything sent to it.... The two apps aren't really comparable unless I've missed an entire 'Whatapps for government/enterprise' business arm.

Re: WhatsApp banned on House staffers' devices

#85

Post by ghc »

benced wrote: post #62

[flagged]

Perhaps you're unaware that there is a special, DoD-certified version of Teams called "Gov Teams", which can be used to share data at multiple impact levels securely. This version of Teams, and the entire Office365 suite, has undergone extensive security certification for use with high IL data.

Re: WhatsApp banned on House staffers' devices

#88

Post by pimlottc »

benced wrote: post #62

[flagged]

They're almost certainly not using the same version as the general public. Most major service providers have a specific version for government with additional controls and restrictions and have undergone certification through FedRAMP, including Microsoft:

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/government

Some other examples:

- AWS GovCloud https://aws.amazon.com/govcloud-us/

- Google Workspace for Government https://workspace.google.com/industries/government/

- GovSlack https://slack.com/solutions/govslack

- Atlassian Government Cloud https://www.atlassian.com/government

Re: WhatsApp banned on House staffers' devices

#90

Post by BeetleB »

oceansky wrote: post #56
Marsymars wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

WhatsApp also feels... tonally weird to use at a serious company, like in the same way it would feel weird to be using snapchat for team meetings.

WhatsApp is already the de facto communication channel in a lot of countries. In Brazil even subpoenas can be sent via WhatsApp.

Heh. I have a friend here in the US. His father passed away in his home country. No will. The whole family needed to show up in court for probate, but he could not travel at that time.

The court: "No problem, just join the session on video using WhatsApp"

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