From my time in Cisco, they take security VERY seriously. There was the story about Cisco devices being intercepted by the NSA in-transit to high-profile targets[0]. This was really bad press, especially since a lot of people assume that Cisco was complacent in the practice (there was no evidence as such, this was very likely the NSA intercepting the package in-route to the target). Many hardware companies (Cisco included) are trying to do verified-boot approaches where they can detect if the firmware or hardware is not genuine, there-by defeating these package intercept cases.
If you are a high-profile target, no matter what vendor or software you use, Five Eyes will do whatever is needed to infiltrate your network. Cisco is a large target just due to their volumes compared to most other solutions (you are more likely to see news of Cisco attacked due to volume of sales). But with that, Cisco will also dedicate resources to trying to defeat this type of attack.
There's a distinction between trusting a company not to look at your data when you hand it to them in plaintext, (Skype) and trusting them to have completely flawless, bugfree code that the NSA hasn't backdoored. (Dual_EC_DRBG)
I'm not sure what parts you can verify, but I'm willing to trust the word of those at Whisper. Perhaps I'm naive but they seem to genuinely care about improving privacy for others.
This comment also shows that privacy is always based on trust. Trusting Cisco, Google, Microsoft, OpenSSL devs, Whisper Systems, whatever. You can decide who's more sympathetic, moxie, Zuckerberg, Nadella..
That was exactly the point I was trying to make when I responded to someone saying "well, with E2E encryption you don't have to trust them". Yes you do.
Wire, maybe. I haven't used it much, but it's supposed to be end-to-end encrypted and supports audio/video/text. No phone requirement either. Still a centralized service, though, so they get access to metadata.
I've been enjoying it quite a bit. I've been successful in getting a good number of my friends over to it; mainly in part due to it's attractive UI and good media support. YouTube and Spotify links preview well in Wire, and there's good gif support. Video calls were excellent quality.
If I'm not mistaken, it's a completely different product with the same name. It was lync for a long time, and they just basically changed the name but kept all the innards intact. I'm fairly sure it's on prem.
Yup, completely different products. Skype for Business is pretty much just a rebranding of Lync 2013 - for the longest time, the Skype for Business client was still calling itself Lync 2013 on it's about page. It's been pretty confusing, to be honest, since the two different Skypes are completely different products, talking different protocols that just barely communicate with each other.
Skype through Office 365 is also Skype for Business/Lync.
With the Lync => Skype for Business rebranding, some of the original MSN-emoticons that used to work in Lync / Office Communicator have been removed. :-(
Slack? Might not fully replace Skype as I don't think there is screen sharing. But for calls and chat, Slack does an outstanding job. Plus all the possible integrations with their API etc.
It's not integrated, but it's fantastic. Have used it extensively for code pairing sessions, undetectable latency on the screen and crystal clear audio.
it is somewhat integrated, namely you can do `/hero @handle` and it will work.
But SH doesn't work on linux, and it slows to a crawl when sharing with more than one person.
Still the best thing available if it works for your case.
