When secure communication is critical — during a cyberattack, major outage, or operational crisis — your organisation needs a trusted communications channel that works outside your primary systems. That’s the role of an out-of-band communications platform.
But not all providers are equal. The right questions will help you separate marketing spin from operational substance — and choose a platform that truly supports your security, resilience, and compliance needs.
Here are ten key questions to ask — and why each one matters.
1. How is your platform architected for resilience and failover?
Why it matters:
Out-of-band systems are most valuable when your main infrastructure is offline, degraded, or compromised - such as during a cyberattack or server outage. Your out-of-band communication platform is your digital lifeboat, if it's reliant on the same environment as your core IT systems, it may fail when you need it most.
Ensure your provider uses geographically distributed data centres, has multiple levels of redundancy, and offers tested failover processes. Ask for real-world examples of incidents where the platform remained operational during client outages.
2. What encryption standards do you use for data in transit and at rest?
Why it matters:
Sensitive conversations about breaches, legal risk, or response strategies must be protected at all times. Look for strong encryption protocols - data needs to be encryption both in transit and at rest. Anything less puts confidentiality at risk.
3. Can the platform operate independently of corporate systems like Active Directory or SSO?
Why it matters:
If your internal identity systems are compromised or unavailable, you still need to communicate. Platforms that rely on Active Directory, SSO, or internal authentication may become inaccessible in exactly the scenarios they're meant to support. In fact, SSO can be a severe vulnerability in a cyber attack.
Ensure the platform functions entirely outside your internal IT environment, with its own secure access controls.
4. What compliance standards and regulations does your platform support (e.g., ISO 27001, DORA, FCA, SEC)?
Why it matters:
Sectors like finance, healthcare, and critical infrastructure face strict regulations on data handling and communication - especially those regulated by the FCA or SEC.
Your provider should support relevant frameworks such as ISO 27001, GDPR, or the Digital Operational Resilience Act (DORA), and demonstrate how their platform helps you stay compliant - not create new risks.
5. How do you provide audit trails and record keeping for regulatory purposes?
Why it matters:
Out-of-band doesn’t mean out of sight. In regulated sectors, it's often necessary to maintain full records of who said what, and when - especially during crisis response.
Ask how the provider captures audit trails, chat logs, conference call recordings, and other metadata. This information should be securely stored in immutable logs, and easily accessible by authorised personnel for regulatory reviews, legal investigations, or internal post-mortems.
6. Can external stakeholders be added quickly and securely?
Why it matters:
During an incident, effective response often involves people outside your organisation - legal teams, regulators, suppliers, or emergency responders. You need to bring them into secure conversations without delay or complexity.
Look for features like guest access, role-based permissions, and the ability to grant temporary access without exposing internal systems.
7. Does the platform support mass alerting and broadcast capabilities?
Why it matters:
In a crisis, speed is everything. The ability to send mass alerts - via SMS, push notification, email, or voice — to staff, executives, or partners is critical. You should be able to target messages by group, location, or role, and track who has seen or acknowledged them. Having this functionality built in saves valuable time when every second counts.
8. Is the platform accessible via mobile, with offline capability?
Why it matters:
Executives, field teams, and remote workers may have limited connectivity during a crisis.
A mobile enterprise app that works offline - with access to contact lists, key documents, and cached messages - can keep operations moving until a connection is restored. This is essential for business continuity in unpredictable environments.
9. Does the platform support collaboration features like file sharing, screen sharing, or video conferencing?
Why it matters:
Text-based communication isn’t always enough. You may need to escalate to a video call, share a screen to review a recovery plan, or send critical documents securely.
Seamless transition between chat, video, and screen sharing allow teams to collaborate and make decisions faster - without jumping between disconnected tools.
10. What onboarding, training, and support do you provide — especially during a live incident?
Why it matters:
The most secure platform is ineffective if your people don’t know how to use it.
Ask how the provider supports onboarding, runs training or exercises, and responds during real incidents.
- What are their support hours?
- Do they offer a personal account manager?
- Can they help activate and scale usage in a crisis?
Preparedness is a partnership — not just a platform.
Final Thoughts
Out-of-band communications are a core part of modern resilience strategies - especially in a world where cyber threats, regulatory scrutiny, and operational risk are only increasing.
Choosing the right platform is about more than features - it’s about confidence that you can lead, coordinate, and respond under pressure. By asking these questions, you’ll be better equipped to choose a solution that doesn’t just meet expectations - it holds up when everything else is failing.
