In an ongoing legal battle between CBS and its controlling shareholder, National Amusements, the latter has accused CBS executives of using TigerConnect (formerly TigerText), a secure messaging application known for disappearing texts, to inappropriately share confidential company messages and “highly relevant documents.”
This filing is the latest development in the lengthy dispute between CBS and the family behind National Amusements over control of the media company and the top TV network. According to The Wall Street Journal, CBS has denied any wrongdoing, claiming that “TigerText was implemented by CBS’s Information Security Group for cybersecurity reasons following the Sony [Corp.] hack, and was not developed or used for any nefarious or sinister communications as some have alleged.” As a result of these allegations, National Amusements asked the court to impound the devices that used TigerText so potential evidence can be recovered, per Bloomberg.
Although the outcome of this legal battle has yet to be determined, this filing has once again brought the compliance and moral compass of businesses using secure messaging applications into the spotlight. Similar concerns were raised last year, when Waymo accused Uber executives of using Wickr and other ephemeral messaging apps to communicate via disappearing text messages. We wrote about that here.
We’re actively monitoring to see how TigerConnect and secure messaging will play a role in the CBS/National Amusements dispute, but in the meantime, we can revisit some of the key learnings from the Uber/Waymo trial.
If you recall, when the allegations against Uber’s executives use of ephemeral messaging were revealed, a major concern was that these solutions were problematic because they didn’t keep records of communications. In some ways, this concern was warranted, as not all messaging solutions on the market meet record retention requirements. However, what many organizations remain either unfamiliar with or imprudent to is that enterprise-grade secure communications platforms like Vaporstream have been built with security, privacy and compliance in mind from inception, allowing for copies of conversations to be archived securely to meet industry-specific record retention and regulatory requirements, or in the case of anticipated litigation.
In today’s workplace, the ability to collect a single copy of record makes eDiscovery and compliance much easier by not requiring collection from multiple mobile points. This type of approach thereby enacts the type of transparent policies that large organizations preach but often fail to pursue.
The Vaporstream Platform archives messages to the organization’s repository of choice when appropriate, before securely wiping, or vaporizing, communications from all devices, reducing the threat of information getting into the wrong hands if a device is lost or stolen.
Follow @Vaporstream on Twitter for the latest updates about secure messaging’s role in national media discussions like the CBS/National Amusements case. To find out more about the Vaporstream Platform, contact us or request a demo today.
Contributor: Galina Datskovsky