The service gives organisations a governed alternative to consumer chat apps, moving work chat groups onto a secure platform with data held in South Africa.
When a client questions how a security incident was handled, the answer may be sitting in a group on a consumer messaging app shared by employees on their personal phones. If an officer has since left the company, recovering the instructions and photographs exchanged during that shift can become difficult.
Work messages are often treated as informal conversations, even when they contain information that an organisation may later need for an investigation, a dispute, or an audit. When teams create their own chat groups on consumer apps, they create a form of shadow IT: business communication running on tools the organisation did not approve and cannot secure, monitor or archive. A managed platform can bring those conversations back under the organisation's control without slowing teams down. When employees leave, they can stay in work groups unless someone removes them, and anything saved on their phones goes with them.
“Companies generally know who manages their email systems. Ask the same question about work chat groups and the answer is often less clear,” says Louis Du Toit, CEO at Sentiv. “When somebody leaves, or a client disputes what happened, those messages can suddenly become important. The business needs to know whether it can still get hold of them.”
For compliance officers, Information Officers and legal teams, the questions are practical: where the information is stored, who can access it, how long it is kept, and whether it can be produced when a regulator, a court or a PAIA requester asks for it. Since April 2025, organisations have had to report security compromises to the Information Regulator through its e-portal. The King V Code, which applies to financial years starting on or after 1 January 2026, also asks governing bodies to oversee how information and technology are governed.
Keeping a record beyond the phone
Teamwire provides a centrally managed messaging environment where organisations can administer users and groups while retaining communication records. Messages are timestamped and stored in a central archive. Authorised users can retrieve and export relevant conversations when required. Administrators can remove departing employees from company messaging groups while retaining the earlier conversations in the organisation's records. Teamwire does not replace collaboration platforms such as Microsoft Teams. It replaces the work groups that run on consumer messaging apps, giving organisations a managed option for operational messaging.
Alarms break through silent mode and show who has seen and responded, a panic button sends an alert with the sender’s location, push-to-talk carries voice messages into the chat, and live location shows where teams are in the field.
In private security, for example, an officer may use push-to-talk to contact the control room, then share incident photographs or further instructions through a messaging application. Teamwire allows that written communication to be retained within a company-managed environment. It can work alongside Sentiv's existing push-to-talk over cellular offering, giving security companies a way to manage their operational messages without replacing the voice systems they already use.
The same applies in the boardroom. Board packs, approvals and directors’ questions increasingly move through chat on executives’ phones, and a lost phone or a SIM swap can expose those conversations. Teamwire signs users in through the organisation’s directory rather than a phone number, lets administrators wipe the app remotely from a lost device, and keeps the archive with the organisation.
Teamwire runs separately from email and collaboration tools, so the response team can still communicate if those systems are down.
“We ask customers where their crisis team would actually communicate if their usual email was down. The plan needs a channel people already have access to, and they need to know how to use it,” says Du Toit.
Sovereign messaging, hosted and managed in South Africa
Sentiv hosts and manages it in South Africa, and the customer organisation holds the encryption keys.
Sentiv provides local support through its South African Network Operations Centre, which operates around the clock.
Teamwire has an established record in demanding operating environments. More than 125,000 police officers in Germany use the platform, and the Bavarian Police have used it since 2017.
The platform's identity management, access controls, and retained message records can help organisations support their responsibilities under legislation such as the Protection of Personal Information Act (POPIA), Promotion of Access to Information Act (PAIA), and Electronic Communications and Transactions Act (ECTA). Because the platform is hosted in South Africa, message data does not need to be transferred outside the country. Compliance still depends on how each organisation uses the platform, along with its own policies and processes.
“With Teamwire, compliance teams get clear answers. The data is hosted in South Africa, access is managed through the organisation’s own directory, and authorised users can export a conversation when it is needed,” says Du Toit.
As part of a campaign running from 16 November to 15 December 2026, Sentiv is encouraging South African organisations to examine how they manage work messaging. The company is highlighting Teamwire, a mission-critical, sovereign messaging service that Sentiv delivers as a software-as-a-service (SaaS) solution, hosted locally and managed in South Africa. It gives businesses greater control over operational conversations and the records they create.
Organisations can review Sentiv's ten-question Work Messaging Exposure Check, along with supporting resources for boards and compliance teams, at https://sentiv.com/teamwire. A 30-minute Teamwire demonstration can be booked through info@sentiv.com.