Starlink, Iridium, BGAN. Picking satellite comms for NGO field operations.
Starlink, Iridium, BGAN. The decision matrix, what each carrier sees, and the operational baseline for NGO field teams operating across borders.
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How to pay local staff and contractors in countries under sanctions.
Hawala, mobile money, prepaid cards, stablecoins. The four channels that actually work for humanitarian payments in restricted zones, and the documentation that protects everyone.
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Digital security for NGO workers and aid staff in restricted environments. The complete operational guide.
NGO workers, expats, and aid staff face three overlapping threat models: state surveillance, criminal opportunism, and the operational gaps of their own colleagues. The operational baseline we use to onboard field deployments and audit existing ones.
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Russia didn’t break Signal. It used the feature you’ve never checked.
Russia ran a phishing campaign that compromised around 300 Signal accounts belonging to ministers, military, diplomats, and journalists. The encryption was never touched. Attackers used Signal’s own Linked Devices feature.
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The US government now requires visa applicants to make their social media public.
As of March 30, 2026, US visa applicants must set all social media profiles to public before their interview. For journalists, lawyers, and NGO workers, this means exposing source networks to government vetting.
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The FBI recovered deleted Signal messages from a seized iPhone. The encryption wasn’t broken.
On March 10, 2026, FBI testimony in a federal trial in Texas revealed that investigators had extracted incoming Signal messages from a defendant’s iPhone, even after the app.
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Digital security for diplomats and expats in high-risk countries.
In a short deployment, you use a travel device and leave.
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How to secure communications in the field. NGO field guide.
Hotel Wi-Fi, conference networks, local SIM data, shared internet in partner offices: all of these are environments where traffic can be read by parties you have no visibility into.
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Digital privacy guide for NGO workers abroad.
Not every deployment carries the same risk.
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A VPN won’t save you if this already happened.
A VPN creates an encrypted tunnel between your device and a server operated by the VPN provider.
