First of all what is encryption. It is scrambling of text to be sent in the form sender to receiver. This renders the data unreadable unless it is decrypted with the right key. On decryption the receiver can now view the information as it was sent. What WhatsApp has done is create an end to end encryption. Meaning even WhatsApp as a company do not see the text in clear. It passes through their servers as encrypted text. This has been a continued effort by WhatsApp to have end to end encryption for the past two years. Encryption is used in many quarters to transmit sensitive information securely for instance in banks and other financial systems. Without any further adieu let us go through top five reasons why WhatsApp did the worked so diligently to make this project a success and why it is a success by itself.
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Security: The most important of the reason why WhatsApp would encrypt its messages is as a security measure. This makes it hard for any person to listen for messages that are on transit. This is called man in the middle attack which is the most common. When a hacker listens to messages in transit from sender to receiver, then this is termed as man in the middle attack.
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It is well deserved that a person should be able to communicate and his security be assured. This gives WhatsApp advantage when it comes to conducting even business transactions.
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When this messages are encrypted then even with a man in the middle, the attacker does not see the text in the clear unless he or she has the key. These were all technology news.
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Avoid government warrant: The government is known to spy and pick information from wherever they can. Normally the government says this is important to detect crime and stop it before it happens.
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This breaks the right to privacy. Where the government can see hear and analyze a person’s communication without their consent. May not be breaking news like some aspects of wearable technology, but still good to know.
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Ones WhatsApp went through with end to end encryption even if the government has a warrant to compel them to give them some information it would make it very hard for them to decrypt the information.
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Strategy: WhatsApp needed to catch up with other chatting services that can do end to end encryption like the famous blackberry chatting app BBM. This allows them to gain the competitive edge and add a critical feature that cements their dominance on the chatting industry.
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Like any innovative company WhatsApp is a dominant player and it innovates continuously to give their users the best experience yet.
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Cost and easy integration: WhatsApp have a very strong core system which is their goose that lays the golden egg. Adding encryption to their messaging servers is quite cheap with existence of new protocols. This has allowed them to do encryption seamlessly without affecting service provision. This is all new technology.
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Technology and encryption algorithms are quickly changing and various organizations are conducting important research that has allowed the deployment of encryption easy and fast.
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User satisfaction: The user is king. And for any company their main goal is to gain and retain clients. So what the client want that is what you give them. Fear and perception that the WhatsApp messaging is not secure and information in transit would be intercepted drove WhatsApp to decide on a way to prevent such fear.
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In doing end to end encryption WhatsApp has ensured that they have reassured their clients of their privacy.
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With this move WhatsApp has just shown that they are in this space for the long run and their customers are key. They have also shown their commitment to the customer’s privacy. Making their clients trust their network and services. By securing the WhatsApp network then the clients will have no reason to fret.
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Again their clients can now transmit sensitive information and still know that it will only be viewed by the intended party but not any other person. This becomes even more secure than sending through message.
Collectively WhatsApp has had a very efficient messaging service with nearly assured delivery in their network. Now that they have added encryption this gives them even more features going forward. This will be a real advantage even raising the bar of entry from new competition. It will be interesting to see how this will work for them. But for now we can only say it was a great feature that was well thought out and crafted with the user in mind. The user will obviously welcome this move.
Article By: Shawn Clark
