"Signalgate" boosts secure app demand
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Encrypted workplace communications services have seen a spike in user interest in the weeks since the now-infamous "Signalgate" started, executives at these companies tell Axios.
Why it matters: No one wants to be the next Mike Waltz or Pete Hegseth by sharing classified materials with someone they shouldn't. Some of these platforms have extra layers of security to limit who can receive and save messages.
Driving the news: Defense Secretary Hegseth texted details about the March 15 military strike in Yemen in a second Signal chat, according to a New York Times report on Sunday.
- That chat, which Hegseth created and accessed using his personal device, included his wife, brother and personal lawyer.
- The Pentagon and Hegseth have denied the report.
The big picture: Trump administration officials aren't the only ones using Signal for confidential communications.
- Local police departments and C-suite executives are constantly conducting business via the publicly available encrypted messaging platform.
- Daily active users for Signal grew 13% last month, year over year, according to app data analysis firm Sensor Tower.
- "'Signalgate' laid that bare: The world moves off of group chats," Ari Andersen, founder and CEO of encrypted chat platform Kibu, told Axios.
Between the lines: Signal isn't to blame for the federal government's operational security failures. But two encrypted communications companies told Axios they've had more customer calls and downloads since The Atlantic's first story about military strike leaks over Signal.
- "It's definitely skyrocketed," Andersen said. "It definitely has accelerated interest and traction on a number of fronts, for sure."
- Kibu came out of beta in January, and its user base is now projected to double this quarter compared with the first three months of the year, Andersen said. Kibu's users include small family financial wealth management offices, bigger financial institutions and privacy-minded individuals.
- Jeff Halstead, founder of Genasys Connect, an encrypted communications tool popular with law enforcement, told Axios that after the initial stories, he had several conversations with law enforcement and city governments.
- "They're all using Signal," he said.
Zoom in: Both Genasys and Kibu require users to verify their identity to be included in a specific chat.
- Genasys works similarly to Slack, but the conversations are encrypted and most customers are law enforcement officers.
- Each police department has its own workspace that only sanctioned users can access. If a case involves several jurisdictions, they can create multi-workspace environments.
- Kibu is similar: Each user must be invited to participate in a specific end-to-end encrypted group chat, and other users in the chat must also approve the people who are added.
- Kibu users also need to verify their identities using on-device facial recognition every time they log on. And anytime a user takes a screenshot of the chat, all participants are notified.
State of play: Most government-grade encrypted communications tools are difficult to use, Halstead said.
- Halstead, a former law enforcement officer, said his experience sending information through the FBI inspired the idea for Genasys' Connect platform.
- "If I need it distributed via the FBI portal — clunky, slow, arduous," he said. "I mean, it's horrible."
The intrigue: Halstead is not shy about the ways his company could help the federal government if it wanted a new communications tool.
- "If we just look at the Department of Defense, the entire department could be deployed before we go out for happy hour today," Halstead said. "If they can text, if they can email, if they can use their fingers on a smartphone, their training lasts about 15 to 30 minutes."
Yes, but: Despite having access to several secure communications options, federal government officials are likely to be using Signal both to evade public records laws and to bypass cumbersome security controls.
- "If you decide to have your communications out of band in a way that is not trackable or retrievable in response to a FOIA request, what you are doing is circumventing the law," Eva Galperin, director of cybersecurity at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, told Axios.
What to watch: So far, the Trump administration hasn't made any broad (public) moves to change its encrypted communications policies to resolve its lingering Signal headaches.
- However, last week, the U.S. Army's CIO office expanded access to Wickr, the Amazon Web Services-owned encrypted communications platform, across the military branch.
- And Wickr and other encrypted communications services like Mattermost appear to still be working with various federal government agencies.
Go deeper: What is Signal, the app Trump officials used to discuss war plans
