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Who We Are

 

Myntex has been a global contender since mobile encryption emerged onto the market, but our manner of doing business has been what’s set us apart from the rest. We believe that running a legitimate, honest, and transparent business is key to gaining the trust and respect of our partners, customers, and competitors.

We have always been open with our intentions to make encryption readily available to everyone around the globe and we have never bought into blocking other providers, causing drama, or talking down about others in the industry. We feel that providing the best product coupled with the best customer service is key to healthy growth of our brand.

 

We operate our office and data center in Calgary, Alberta where we extend an open invitation to our partners, customers, and anyone else that is interested in learning about encryption. We don’t hide behind a website, or contact form but encourage people to come in to meet our team, and see our beautiful space.

 

Our data center is more than capable of handling the trials and tribulations that go along with running mission-critical services for our customers. You can read more about our data center here.

 

The Myntex office/data center is packed full of intriguing and fun things to help with morale, and encourage creativity. No one wants to come into boring a cubicle ridden office.

The sole purpose of creating our office the way we did was to make it welcoming to our current, and prospective partners and customers. We also want the place we work to reflect our business morals, and goals; to be fun, engaging, and modern.

 

With leading edge technology, world class customer support, 99.9% service up-time, and some of the brightest minds in the encryption industry we can confidently say that if you are looking to represent a brand, Myntex should be your first choice.

 

We would love to hear from you, feel free to get in touch with us!

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Myntex Protect its Customers from Cyber Attacks. Here’s How.

Anyone with a computer or internet connection is vulnerable to a cyber attack. The motives behind these attacks vary, but generally the goal of hackers is to disable a network or service, expose confidential information, demand a ransom or steal private data. No matter the motivation, it’s always illegal and it’s becoming more and more common.

As a PGP encryption provider and a global business, Myntex is the target of something called a Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack. In this post we’ll explore what a DDoS attack is and how Myntex has taken all the necessary steps to protect its customers.

 

What is a DDoS attack?

A DDoS attack happens when a hacker (or often a team of hackers) “flood” a network with requests and information in a bid to make a service unavailable. This flood overwhelms the server of a company or organization, and effectively takes it out of service. It’s illegal, but happens regularly, and it’s extremely difficult to track down the perpetrators because the attack usually comes from many different sources.

Before launching the attack, hackers will build a network of infected computers. These infected computers are called bots and when collectively used together they form a “botnet.” The hackers spread malware via emails and social media (read our last post about the dangers of phishing). Once they have a large enough botnet, hackers can use their army of computers to launch a coordinated attack.

Large-scale operations are often the target of DDoS attacks, including banks and health care systems. Many of the high-profile cyber incidents you’ve read about were most likely DDoS attacks.

 

How does Myntex protect its customers?  

We’re acutely aware of the threat of DDoS attacks. Keeping the data of our customers private and secure is our utmost priority. We protect PGP encryption customers with a two-prong approach.

First, only authorized individuals have the ability to communicate with the Myntex infrastructure, via our whitelist. This largely prevents DDoS attacks. Random computers don’t have the ability to launch an attack because we drop all unauthorized traffic from our system.

Second, we use Radware DDoS protection to further mitigate the threat of attacks.

Radware is a large and respected company that protects leading global businesses, as well as governments, from large-scale attacks.

Radware has the ability to detect and mitigate DDoS attacks as they are unfolding in real time and respond within seconds. They filter requests to our service, which gives us clean traffic. In turn, our infrastructure is protected and so are our customers.

Our customers retain their ability to communicate securely and privately using PGP encryption for BlackBerry.

 

 

Do you have more questions about how we protect customers from cyber attacks? Get in touch.

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How Email Encryption Protects Everyone in the UK

In the UK, there’s talk of government moving to ban end-to-end encryption. According to leaked documents, the legislation in question would force technology companies to “build backdoors into their products, in an attempt to allow its intelligence agencies to access civilians’ private data and messages.”

 

This is alarming for many reasons.

Backdoors are easy to exploit. It’s not a case of only granting access to government surveillance teams. Encryption technology doesn’t work that way. Once a backdoor is built into technology, anyone with the know-how — including criminals or corrupt government officials — could gain access to private data. It’s no longer secure.

Frustratingly, a move like this also assumes everyone who uses encryption is a criminal or planning a terrorist attack, despite the fact that all citizens in the UK have a right to communicate securely and privately.

Encrypted communication protects everyone, whether you’re sharing sensitive client documents, planning an event or sending family photos of your baby.

 

Without encryption communications, we’re all at risk

Earlier this year, the UK home secretary pushed for WhatsApp, the widely popular messaging service, to install backdoors in its technology to make it accessible to authorities. Her reasoning was that criminals are discussing their plans using the app and investigators require access.

While no one can prevent criminals from using encrypted communications, a ban on it would risk exposing huge swaths of financial and personal data, simply for the sake of catching a small number of criminals. It’s too big of a threat on civil liberties.

Relying on mainstream telecommunications providers for secure email just isn’t advisable either. Providers regularly store communications and must comply with requests from law enforcement to hand over data.

A sweeping bill — nicknamed The Snooper’s Charter — passed last year in the UK, giving government even more surveillance power and the ability to hack and store data relating to internet use. The Investigatory Powers Act gives the British state the ability to compel service providers and mobile networks to store what you do online for 12 months.

This includes email correspondence and browsing histories.

 

PGP encryption is for anyone who needs it

Myntex users are individuals or businesses in the UK who value their privacy and security. They’re committed to being able to express themselves freely without outside intervention. Businesses have trade secrets they want to protect, as well as sensitive information that cannot be leaked like financial reports and health data.

Using BlackBerry email encryption protects these communications by making intercepted messages impossible to read, and deleting the messages themselves within 24 hours. Because we don’t store messages or encryption keys, there’s nothing for us to turn over to law enforcement even if we are the subject of a subpoena. You’re protected no matter what laws are enacted in the UK.

 

Ready to learn more about encryption?

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Why Myntex Owns Their Canadian Data Centre (and Why That’s Important)

Unlike many encrypted email providers, Myntex houses their servers onsite at our Canadian headquarters. We’d like to explain why having our data centre on the premises is significant, and how this influences how users ultimately choose between encryption providers.

 

We have total control over our servers

Because our data centre is located in our headquarters, we have total control over it. In the event of an issue arising, we can be onsite immediately to troubleshoot the problem. We keep the servers running smoothly, installing critical updates ourselves, controlling the heating, cooling and humidity, and ensuring we have disaster recovery plans in place.

This means fewer interruptions to PGP BlackBerry encryption services for users.

DDOS attacks are a massive problem for communication companies. Competitors, activists and hackers launch DDOS attacks to disrupt users’ service and sometimes even to test exploitable networks. Running your own data centre means you can use multiple methods of DDOS protection with flexible mitigation options.

Our office is located in Canada, so we benefit from laws that protect the digital privacy rights of citizens. Canadian laws aren’t as invasive as those in other countries. If law enforcement wanted to gain access to our servers, they would need a warrant.

Of course, even if Canadian authorities did gain a warrant, they wouldn’t be able to access any emails because they are deleted every 24 hours and without access to the PGP keys, decryption is impossible (more on that later).

 

No security in unstable countries

Unauthorized access to data centres is a real threat in less stable countries. Unfortunately, many encryption providers choose to house their servers in countries different than their headquarters. They may not own their own data centre, as this is a significant investment, so they co-locate in someone else’s data centre. This is incredibly risky for several reasons.

Unstable countries often have unstable governments, who are more likely to bribe a data centre employee for access to their servers. Your data may feel safe until it’s not. As well, there’s no one onsite from the PGP encryption provider to keep tabs on equipment failure, tampering or theft.

 

We don’t actually host data

It’s important to note that all data that comes through Myntex’s servers is encrypted. The encrypted email service is also subject to an automatic delete policy, which means emails are wiped every 24 hours. No one’s data sits needlessly on our servers.

 

Have more questions about our Canadian data centre? We’re happy to chat. Get in touch.