Spamhaus uses Mattermost to accelerate communication and strengthen online trust & safety

Spamhaus is an independent organization dedicated to strengthening trust and safety online. By collecting and analyzing 7 billion data signals every day, Spamhaus protects 4.5 billion mailboxes globally. This is achieved by sharing IP and domain reputation signals, which are used for cyber threat intelligence, email protection, and network security, among other things. Founded in London, Spamhaus is powered by a distributed team of 50 employees spread out across the world.

Moving away from email: Seeking a secure collaboration solution for real-time communication 

As a provider of threat intelligence data on cybercriminal activity, Spamhaus operates in a challenging, sometimes threatening environment. This means keeping employees safe and sensitive data secure is a priority. 

The organization has no physical co-working office locations, relying predominantly on remote communication. At first, Spamhaus used email for most of its communication and collaboration, creating different email lists for specific conversation subjects. However, this approach soon revealed its own set of challenges.

“People would get confused about which distribution list to send to, which led to lost communications, incorrect answers, and delays to processing and remediation,” explains Matthew Stith, industry liaison at Spamhaus, whose role is to build relationships within the industry and strengthen online trust and safety.

To overcome the limitations of collaborating over email, the Spamhaus team began looking for a communication solution they could use to facilitate quick, real-time conversations. After using a combination of solutions — including Threema and Skype — the team realized they needed a single platform that could be deployed across the entire organization. 

“Having to use multiple programs to communicate within a team isn’t ideal,” Stith continues. 

But finding a single source communication solution wasn’t the only concern.

Self-hosting Mattermost: Leveraging open source for data security

While the challenges of email communication may have been the trigger, Spamhaus’ chief priority was finding a self-hosted solution that would give them complete control over the security of their sensitive data.

“From day one, it was clear we required a system that could be hosted within our own infrastructure,” Stith explains. “We explored Slack, but that’s hosted, and we didn’t want our conversations stored on their servers. We wanted to have full control of our systems and data.” 

In addition to self-hosting capabilities, Spamhaus needed a solution with advanced security controls, like multi-factor authentication. And as an organization that uses various open source tools, the team was interested in an open source communications solution with a robust community, like Mattermost.

“We wanted something with a community,” Stith says. “We provide data on behalf of Spamhaus Project, where community is a fundamental part of their ethos, subsequently making it important to Spamhaus Technology.” 

After evaluating their options, the team deployed Mattermost in 2017, and they haven’t looked back since.

Swift action, secure communication for mission-critical operations strengthening internet safety 

As the leading authority on IP and domain reputation, data integrity is essential to Spamhaus. When an issue arises, it’s critical to identify and address the root cause swiftly. By using Mattermost, the engineering team can immediately inform the front-facing commercial team if a problem occurs. As a result, Spamhaus has significantly improved its ability to remediate issues efficiently.

“The time to remediate is much quicker now because we can have these rapid discussions.” Stith continues, “With this comes constant improvement to the quality of our data provisioning. Mattermost becomes critical to collaborate and be able to work across a number of teams to get to the necessary outcome fast.”

Due to data sensitivity, some conversations may need to be confined to dedicated channels. By using the self-hosted Mattermost instance, Spamhaus knows that sensitive discussions (and data) will stay protected. 

Breaking down silos: Enhancing team visibility and streamlining collaboration

Spamhaus has integrated Mattermost with several tools, automatically feeding important updates to specific channels to keep the team aligned. This includes internal tools for notifications, GitLab for ticketing, monitoring systems, statistics, and their authentication system for single sign-on (SSO).

“Without Mattermost, we were unable to effectively communicate beyond one-to-one conversations,” Stith says. “We needed something that we could integrate with to improve visibility and internal sharing amongst our team members.” 

Instead of communicating across email threads or siloed group chats — both of which lack visibility across the broader team — Mattermost has increased visibility and helps Spamhaus shatter communication barriers and geographical constraints.

“Mattermost has helped us get around siloed working — the one-to-one and one-to-few communications,” says Natalia Duarte, product marketing manager at Spamhaus. “Without Mattermost, we’d have distinct teams talking amongst themselves, with minimal cross-functional conversations. Over time, Mattermost has enabled us to bridge that gap. The impact has been innumerable opportunities — more diverse perspectives contributing to a range of topics, providing much improved outcomes.”

Raising awareness with automatic notifications via API 

One of Mattermost’s valuable features for Spamhaus is the ability to automate information sharing from other systems via API.

“An example is pushing timely data on network abuse from our internal systems into Mattermost, providing wider visibility and allowing relevant teams to take swift action — critical in our world.” Duarte explains.

Sharing updates on the go for a remote workforce

As a fully distributed team, Spamhaus employees are often on the go. Whether someone is conducting market research in the field, exploring a new potential partnership (or dropping the kids off at school!), the Mattermost mobile app enables them to quickly and easily communicate from any location.

“When you get snippets of market insight or feedback from conversations, it’s great to be able to share this information quickly with the wider team,” Duarte says.

Future-proofing communication with Mattermost 

For Spamhaus, investing time and resources into analyzing the impact of Mattermost would be a waste; to them, the value is clear.

“As a global team, we use this tool 24/7; it’s central to our day-to-day operations,” Duarte says. “So we’ve never needed to quantify its value; it’s clear. That said, having a centralized platform has without doubt significantly impacted efficiency, but critical for us is being self-hosted and secure.”

Stith believes that every organization needs effective communication tools, particularly those with geographically distributed teams.

“If you’re looking for a solution that needs to be hosted on your own network and can be integrated in multiple places, I would absolutely recommend Mattermost,” Stith concludes. “Mattermost is critical to our business.”