Your Input Needed: End-to-End Encryption (E2EE) in Mattermost
Considering End-to-End Encryption
Mattermost is considering adding an end-to-end encryption (E2EE) solution for specific use cases. We need your thoughts on this exceptional security measure.
What is End-to-End Encryption?
E2EE is a special form of security where only the participants can read messages. Not even system administrators can access message content.
Why not do End-to-End Encryption all the time?
Most organizations wouldn’t want E2EE in Mattermost. Here’s why:
It prevents administrators from archiving and enabling audits
It limits AI-powered features and the effectiveness of searching
It complicates compliance with data retention and eDiscovery requirements
It’s strong security, but there are important trade offs to consider.
How we’re balancing security and functionality
We’re exploring ways to offer E2EE for unique situations while preserving essential features:
Key Escrow: Allows message recovery in specific enterprise-defined circumstances
Client-Side Search: Enables users to search their own E2EE messages
Help us understand if and how E2EE fits with your Enterprise needs:
Do you have use cases that require E2EE?
Is Key Escrow a useful option for your compliance needs?
Would Client-Side Search be sufficient for your E2EE messages?
Yes, this is an essential feature not just for large enterprises but also for smaller companies. A system admin shouldn’t be able to snoop into the conversations of the CXO group even if he wanted to. Right now we keep sensitive conversations to other channels and use Mattermost for everything else.
For my use case it is also important. For my users it is essential that their private messages will be private, and ability to create private channels also. But I understand that this can be hard to implement.
This is really exciting. For us e2ee is essential and it almost made us go for another competitor that enables it. It also makes some of our conversations stay in an App with e2ee, since its mandatory for some of our conversations.
Having e2ee on Mattermost would make it the product that has everything in our checklist.
I’m not a business user - my current use case is a server for a small community, but we do some activist stuff which might at some point be targeted by repressive governments, and it would be nice to know that the server wasn’t holding readable information.
We currently use Signal, and I expect Mattermost is currently a long way from being able to support this use case, but the option of having multiple different channels organised in a single workspace is appealing.
Any movement on this topic? We are running a small instance for a while and we are really happy with Mattermost. It is the best and feature rich open source messaging platform in our opinion.
The only think that stops us to fully migrate to MM is the lack of End to End encryption, especially in the direct messages.