Field security for NGO workers and expats — device prep, border crossings, secure communications, and operational privacy abroad.
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.
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.
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.
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.
In a short deployment, you use a travel device and leave.
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.
Not every deployment carries the same risk.
A VPN creates an encrypted tunnel between your device and a server operated by the VPN provider.
Pegasus is a commercial surveillance tool developed by NSO Group, an Israeli company that sells exclusively to government clients.
The worker was returning from a deployment in a country where the organisation’s work had attracted official scrutiny.