It feels as though 2024 was a year that highlighted the need for a new era of communications. To cite just a few examples, Russia intercepted German military discussions about providing Taurus missiles to Ukraine through a security lapse during a WebEx video conference call. A weakness exploited through a lack of interoperability between systems, and reliance on the unencrypted phone network to bridge the gap.

By now you’d assume most government organisations are aware of the risks associated with consumer messaging apps like WhatsApp, Signal and Telegram being used in the workplace. Consumer apps, convenient for personal use, are completely unsuited for official communications. They lack the necessary security, auditability and management controls that public sector organisations require.

We’re incredibly proud to announce the launch of Synapse Pro, a new enterprise Matrix server from Element that delivers phenomenal efficiencies for large-scale Matrix deployments in the public sector. Synapse Pro is Element’s best practice Matrix homeserver for huge public sector deployments.

This week the FBI, the US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) and partner agencies in New Zealand, Australia and Canada began advocating for the use of end-to-end encrypted (E2EE) communications. The move is in reaction to law enforcement backdoors in the public telephone network - including AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile - being hijacked by Salt Typhoon; a cyberattack group believed to be operated by the Chinese government.

We’re excited to announce the release of ESS 24.10, the latest Long-Term Support (LTS) version of the Element Server Suite! This is an important milestone as it brings Element X to customers who require the six monthly LTS releases of ESS.

Hi all, Back in April 2020 I published a surprisingly popular guide of how to self-host a basic Matrix instance on Debian using Riot (as Element was called back then!), Synapse and Jitsi.

The Matrix Conference saw the official launch of Element X! That means Element X is now the mobile app that almost all Element users should be using for messaging; both in the workplace and for personal use. Some large customers that self-host are still using the classic mobile Element apps. Once those customers have migrated, Element X will simply become ‘Element’ and the classic mobile apps will be retired.

Element is delighted to be joining the launch of openDesk at Smart Country Convention in Berlin, 15-17 October. For those that don’t know already, openDesk is an Office & Collaboration Suite for public administration. The development of openDesk is led by the Centre for Digital Sovereignty in Public Administration (ZenDiS), a limited company created by Germany’s Federal Ministry of the Interior (BMI). Element was selected by ZenDiS as the real time communications component within openDesk.

Fast Company recently covered NATO ACT’s partnership with us to create its NI2CE Messenger, an exploratory initiative to investigate the potential of a digitally sovereign messenger. For experimental use within NATO ACT, NI2CE (NATO Interoperable Instant Communication Environment) is a sovereign and secure messenger that aims to complement existing NATO communication solutions with a secure Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) style messenger for ‘non classified’ use.

Element is launching the world’s first communications platform based on the upcoming Matrix 2.0 release. The result is blazing performance which outperforms the mainstream alternatives - across a decentralised system that enables self-hosting and end-to-end encryption - as well as open standard interoperability to revolutionise real time communication between large organisations.