[falcolas]

Corollary question: Why do you assume that Slack's security expertise and security budget is greater than your own?

All we can do is assume that Slack cares about security enough to be sufficient. Last I checked, they didn't have any form of compliance certification, yet HIPPA, PCI, etc. compliant clients use them without reservation.

[eropple]

> Why do you assume that Slack's security expertise and security budget is greater than your own?

I don't assume it. I know it for a fact; I've met some of their team and I know others by reputation. And I'm not exactly a slouch when it comes to this stuff (I don't eat and sleep crypto but a large part of my business is building secure infrastructure/consulting on the systems running on that infrastructure for regulated as well as non-regulated environments).

[count]

Slack has, publicly, a multi-member security team! That's entirely focused on the chat system that I don't have to put any of my teams time towards.

[fweespeech]

I'm curious...

Which is more secure?

A) Slack.

B) Open source software on a LAN accessible only through physical entry, SSH, and/or a VPN.

[type0]

I would say that Patchwork which runs on SSB protocol is more secure than Slack (if used on your LAN) and it's written in a freaking javascript.

[count]

I'd vote slack.

[fweespeech]

> I'd vote slack.

Then I suggest you put more effort into securing your LAN situation because that is a vote indicating your belief your workstations are insecure.

[count]

If you don't assume your user/dev workstations are insecure, you're going to have a rough time in life.

[eropple]

I'm pretty confident in saying that 95% of companies have worse endpoint protection, local network protection, cloud protection, or the intersection of any two or three of those things than Slack does application protection. Maybe more than 95%.

[count]

You should look again:

https://slack.com/security

[falcolas]

OK: Slack is not currently a PCI-certified Service Provider.

I was also a bit surprised what they consider out of scope for their bug bounty program: https://hackerone.com/slack

[count]

I can't begin to fathom a use case for slack where you would put card data in the system...

[fweespeech]

You've never met a call center.

They've sent bug reports with credit card data they've typed in during a phone call through a variety of insecure methods.

They've also written people's credit card info on sticky notes.

Trust me, the horror that is card data and a call center is scary.

[falcolas]

How about a bug report screen shot? Lots of non-security conscious users don't understand why this could be bad. It's your (making the assumption that "you" in this case is a Slack Administrator) job to protect them from themselves.

[bogomipz]

The use case is user error. I have also seen no shortage accidentally people paste passwords into Slack as well

[oneplane]

HIPPA, PCI, etc. compliancy doesn't actually mean you are secure, it just means you are compliant. Take ransomware attacks for example, most of the bigger companies that get hit and have no working plan to continue their business are compliant to all sorts of things, hell complete governments are in that category...

Compliancy only tells a story about management and how many MBA's you have, it doesn't actually mean you have good security. Only being compliant isn't going to help you not get data leaks or data loss!

[falcolas]

You're correct - it doesn't mean you're secure. It does, however, point out that you're putting some thought and effort into security. PCI requires remediation plans or justifications to pass, as does HIPPA.

And, for better or worse, you need your service providers, including chat, to be compliant. If your company were to leak PII via Slack, your company would be in pretty hot water for putting PII on a non-certified service provider.

At least if it were certified, you could say "we've done our due diligence to protect people's PII". Perhaps only important to leadership and lawyers, but still important.

[oneplane]

In this case, however, Slack is certified.

[nzoschke]

I happen to know a few people on the Slack security team from a prior job. SalesForce, another SaaS business people trust to manage all their data.

There's no question that Slack's budget is greater than my own. They have a large, full-time security team. I have a bit of attention from myself or a colleague when setting a system up.

There's also no question their expertise is better. These are life long security professionals with direct experience at other SaaS companies.